$505 sounds like a good deal. Most folks don't actually have racks or cabinets at home, so I wasn't taking that into consideration. The homebrewed machine could have an assload of drives in it, though (but you might have to get a real kickass power supply). Think about it -- 4 drives on the motherboard, 4 more per PCI slot. Get a motherboard with enough PCI slots (and, again, a kickass power supply, or multiple ones) and you could have 24 drives in the machine, physical space allowing. Plus, it's easy to fix if it breaks. For this purpose, parts is parts.