Large Raid setup advice/recommendations pls

[Socrilles17]

Hi trying to build a backup device for my lab (did one earlier this year based on people's advice here - only 10 drives and it was a great success):

What we are thinking right now is:

Case: SUPERMICRO CSE-846TQ-R900B
(can I get an ATX board in this case..newegg has a special with an asus board and nehalem xeon)

Drives: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F2EG HD154UI 1.5TB X 24

Raid card: areca ARC-1280ML-2G but wondering if the areca ARC-1680IX-24-4G is better.

Probably just do an intel setup with the nehalem xeons. Are these good decisions, are there better raid cards available (or similar quality at better prices)? and finally should we be worried about not getting "raid class" drives. I've built lots of PCs but really have little experience with RAID setups, another person in the lab will be doing the software and the system will be linux based.


Thanks for any advice, I'll try to get pictures posted when we start piecing the thing together