I find some of those prices absurd. With a Windows certified manufacturer, you can get Windows Server Foundation for not much more than Windows 7/8. My stock server, with Windows Server 2012 Foundation, Intel Quad Xeon, 16 GB RAM, LSI 8 drive RAID card, 8 hot swap bays, 4U RM server, Power, keyboard, mouse, is about $2400 (Do not ask me where I get it). Most deployments are 8 x ?? SATA drives for storage, but I can do a "starter" with expansion by using this plus a 4 TB drive for about $2500. Can go up to 24 TB (RAID) if needed or more with ESata expansion. I choose to not design based on price and customer, but keep a consistent package for all customers. The new purple drives for < $200 for 4 TB are a game changer, really.
I kick myself because about 80-90% of my business this year has been existing customers needing new sites, upgrades, or replacement. The boxes with no expandability are difficult. One of these boxes (above) you have many options.
An Exacqvision A series 4 TB 2U box is about $2400 (basically same price as this box). You do get 4 licenses. But no RAID?? This is a "low cost, sell Exacq" option. You need RAID!! With Exacq, you need to record to a virtual drive cluster. Single JBOD drives do not give you the expanded R/W ability, which is the limiting factor on systems without trancoding/server side motion and processing. RAID gives you this. Seneca Data was showing off their NVR solution, for $1600, which was a Windows 7 i5 with a storage and SSD OS drive. Where do I go with this. "Sorry, mister customer, I know I sold you this last year, but you need a new box for what you plan to do".
I must admit, I am becoming a little smitten with Hikvision Pro series NVR solutions. The software is not that bad, really. I use it for my home system and the mobile app is decent. 64 channel system with 12 TB of storage and RAID for less than $2500. Heck, Exacq licenses would cost over $10K for the software alone (plus $1600 per year). Milestone/Genetec/Other licenses would cost even more. Plus, you get to add Axis/Vivotek/ACTI/Sony/etc.