Hello Guys!
I'm a happy owner of RME FF 800 for half a year and it's really wonderful card for any purpose. I tried to use it to record drums on  notebook (5400 RPM) and it was correct as I can see.
So I want to record some live shows and I think it will be OK using 1 FF 800 and my note with firewire400 (4pin). But in case of my note's been used on stage during the show that becomes impossible.
So I want to build a PC for recording which will be placed near mixer and FF800. Fifreface will take analog inputs from Direct Outputs of a mixer and then I need to translate it to PC. I hope to buy another FF800 and then use them together for 20 channels of recording. Unfortunately, I don't have another note with firewire port and usb-firewire connectors are of no use as I think (correct me if I'm wrong). Here is my problem.
I think of small PC, based on mini-ITX or microATX motherboard with Intel CPU (with integrated video, IvyBridge). I also want to use 7200 RPM HDDs better in 3,5" but 2,5" is acceptable as I think. But how small can it be? I want to use 1U server chassis like supermicro CSE-503L-200B. But it's restricted in cooling. I will use Win7 x64, Cubase SX (5), Intel CPU (think of i3 Ivy Bridge) and i have FW800 pci-e controller on LSI made by startek which currently works correct with my Fireface 800.
So my questions to RME support are:
1. What CPU is required to work with FF800 for recording 20 analog channels to HDD(s) - Is Intel Atom sufficient?
2. Do I really need RAID1 (Stripe) from HDDs not to have lags because of hard disk subsystem for 20 ch recording?
3. Will 2 FF800 connected by a FW800 cable work if I connect them by FW400 cable to PC?
4. Will FF800 use CPU much when recording 20 channels? - that's because of CPU temperature

P.S. I will write the same post on Cubase support forum. As I think the host programm is of great importance in this question too.