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Wouldn't it be cheaper to get a cheap case with a psu?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to get a cheap case with a psu?

and how would you make a RAID volume out of 4 drives in a case?

case w/ PSU & 4+ internal 3.5" <$50
g: $34 Athenatech A416BS.H350 350W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811190040
CPU: lower power <$50
g: $30 AMD Sempron LE-1250 45W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103189
MB w/ RAID: ~$80
g: $65 JetWay JPN78VM2-HL (SATA 3Gb/s: 6, SATA RAID: 0/1/5/10/JBOD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153140
memory 1-2GB: ~$20
g: $23 Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134488
OS: Linux: free
total: $152 - a little more then $140 but you have a standalone home file/media server which you can put in garage to avoid possible noise from the cheap case.

#3 - I doubt HW RAID is included, so your OS will see each of the drives. I use Ubuntu with Linux Software RAID and I'm extremely pleased.

To answer your question - "How to create a RAID"? In Linux,
- partition each drive with an "autoRAID filesystem",
- use mdadm to create a RAID5 array (chunk size 128K),
- mkfs -t jfs /dev/md0 (or whereever the mdadm tells you the device is located),
- use mdadm to pull the array info needed for the /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf file,
- update the /etc/fstab with the /dev/md0 device and mount point, create the mount point, mount /dev/md0 /raid5, and
- start using your array with some test data.

Many people will say that HW RAID is better than SW RAID. I've used both and will admit that high-end hardware RAID works great when you are a company and keep everything under maintenance. RAID experience from a simple Promise TX4310 up to EMC-DMX3 frames with near real-time remote block level replication.

As an individual, I prefer to avoid hardware vendor "lock in" - data written by HW RAID cards isn't stored in an open format. When/if that card fails, you'll need a replacement card that is **very** similar in model to get your data. Then there's the issue with software drivers for the RAID cards. If you don't run Windows, drivers generally aren't full featured or maintained to the current kernel level. Promise wanted me to run a 3 year old kernel to use their Linux RAID driver. With SW RAID, the controller doesn't matter as much, provided JBOD access is available. Here's an article by a Linux kernel developer on why SW RAID may be better: http://linux.yyz.us/why-software-raid.html