[geeks] OT: Pointers for buying System Components (high-end PC server)

[Lionel Peterson]

Hello all,

New $ork has me out looking to source high-end server cabinets and misc. components (at wholesale) and I'm wondering if folks here on the list have any pointers/vendor suggestions.

My main challenge is to source a 16 drive SATA hot-swap case with room for a DVD burner and two internal IDE OS drives. The cabinet I am replacing was an 8 drive server case from supermicro that ran about $600-700 itself.

I'll also be looking for Intel MBs, Procs, RAM & (a lot of) SATA 250 or larger deives.

I'd like vendor pointers, and also if anyone has a server case they like, I'd be happy to hear about that too. My ideal case would be:

3U or 4U Rackmount

Handle full ATX motherboard (since it has to accomodate 6 PCI cards)

Have adequate cooling (and built-n temp. monitoring)

Have redundant power supplies

Support a DVD drive

and provide for dual IDE or SATA drives (for the OS), either 3 1/2" or 2 1/2" drives.
 
Background: Building about 50 DVR boxes each with 4 four-port PCI capture cards, and video storage in RAID config. The hard part seems to be that wee need 4x PCI slots for the capture cards, 2x PCI slots for the SATA RAID cards, and maybe an AGP graphics card slot, all on the same MB. (If the MB has a good on-board video system the AGP card slot could be omitted)

I don't get to redesign the platform, but I can make it as good as possible...

Thanks in advance for any vendor/case pointers...

Lionel