Recommended hardware for 48 drive SSD

I'm planning to build an open-e box with 48 intel x25's. The goal is to consolidate and virtualize storage for several iop thirsty MSSQL servers. I need to make some decisions on the supporting hardware and since it's a dedicated box I'm hoping to get suggestions from the open-e engineers/experts here.

Motherboard/CPU
Does open-e prefer fewer faster cores or many slower cores? Is it cpu hungry, should I get 3+ ghz chips? Is it bandwidth hungry, would it be beneficial to use nehalem xeons w/triple channel ddr3 or would the cheaper yorkies or opterons w/dual channel ddr2 suffice?

Memory
Is it beneficial to add lots of memory? Presumably the local ram is used for read/write combining and caching? Is it basically "the more the better" or is there a practical limit?

Controllers
Being a dedicated box I'd imagine host based raid controllers or non raid controller + software raid is the way to go? If hardware raid controllers are used does this affect the cpu decision, perhaps cheaper/slower/fewer cpus necessary with hw raid?

NIC
Again being a dedicated box I'm guessing TCP offload is all for naught and just plain vanilla multiport gbe is the way to go? Do multiport cards without TOE even exist?

Chassis
I've found a pretty nice 4U chassis supporting 48 2.5" drives but I'm interested in other options if they're out there. I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be a top loading chassis for 2.5"

Also, if anyone has experience (or can point me to specific threads) using open-e in a similar fashion I'd love to compare notes.

hey gordy

I have been having good performance with fast quad cores, (>2gb)
get a motherboard that is on the HCL list (to be on the safe side)
more memory would help (4GB)
I've tested a few nic and found the intel gets better performance
as for raid controllers I would go with an adaptec, 3ware or areca