N2
Shouldn't the hard drives be in the dumb box, though? They are a heat issue. You got SCSI in there, or a pile of IDE's? I was toying with the idea of putting all of my drives in one box, and just my mobo in another, wih the
PSU mounted on the outside. HVD SCSI would let me put the drives on the other side of the house.
Why not add a passive backplane to the second box? (more PCI slots... I really don't know how they work, but It doesn't seem to require a special mobo, from what I've see.)