First time lighting up SAS drives

[xs6]

This is my first time lighting up SAS drives so I'm looking for some advice.

I have come upon about 14 10K SFF (2.5 inch) SAS drives. I would like to use at least 4 of them, preferably 8 or more of them, on my Linux desktop as JBOD (not a hardware RAID). I want Linux to talk to the disks directly so there is no abstraction layer and I can see SMART information from within Linux (so NOT a bunch of 1-disk RAID0 arrays).

Here's my current MB and case:

• MB: http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en-us/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=511
• Case: http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/classic_series/gamma (4 out of 5 of the 3.5" bays are occupied; none of the 5.25" bays are occupied)

So I need three things:

• a SAS HBA,
• a place to physically put the disks, and
• power/data cabling.

I am looking at this HBA: http://ark.intel.com/products/39105/Intel-RAID-Controller-SASUC8I. I saw a cheaper M1015 but I'm trying to avoid random shady online stores.

My concerns are:

• I may need to re-flash to get a JBOD. NewEgg reviews are mixed between "flashing was a piece of cacke with FreeDOS" and "flashing was a nightmare".
• I have heard cases of some RAID cards/HBAs (not this one specifically) disabling the motherboard SATA ports. This would be a problem for me.
• I have heard of 16x PCI-e slots not supporting things that aren't graphics cards.

As for where to physically put the disks, I could get a pair of 4 x 2.5 inch hot-swap bays that fit into a single 5.25 inch bay (e.g. http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=114 or http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/mobilerack/cse-m28sab.cfm) except I absolutely do not need hot-swap capability so I would prefer something cheaper if there are fixed-bay drive racks. I'm also willing to get an entirely new case for this if need be (it'll still probably be cheaper than two of those Icy Docks). My drives are about 15 mm thick.

I have not looked at cabling yet since that might depend on whether or not I would be using a backplane.