There is no perfect farm, only a perfect farm for you.
Also it depends a lot on if you have plans to grow the farm or not.
There’s quite a bit to take into consideration and you can’t have it all
- Housing
- Data connections
- Power connections
- Cost
- Noise
- Space
- Heat
- Convenience (of maintenance)
- Power usage
Personally I’m in the camp of @MisterSavage and I don’t care to spend much money on stuff just to hold my disks. I use some aluminum u-rail to hold the disks, costs about $5 from the hardware store. Holds 10 disks in width of a server rack.
It’s open air with a lot of space between so just a little lazy airflow will keep them under 40C even when the room is at 25
for connecting, you could use 2 of these or go for a HBA + Expander:
Or go for the Cheaper SATA option (I like cheap) but those are not always as reliable as their SAS counterparts.
A single ATX PSU with 25A on the 5V rail should be enough to power 30 drives (If you use HBA’s you can probably set them to staggered spin-up as well).
There is also this, but my worry is the noise level of that 40mm fan:
Or have a look here for option on making your own power cables with added 5V power
I just build myself a new farmer with an i3-6100 that, according to hardwaremonitor, draws about 3-5W when farming. Whole system uses 160-165W at the wall for 22 disks now.
I think I originally had a point to make but have long since forgotten it.