Again I will ask. What is "high end components"?
I would imagine he means datacenter grade, just take a look at the chassis for an $8K server. Lets start with the easy stuff. First they all have internal power supplies and are 19" wide so they will fit in a datacenter rack without the need for shelves.
Normally CPUs and GPUs are just passive (fanless) heatsinks which use the case air flow to cool them. The "case" fans provide the forced air across all components using multiple high CFM (noisy) fans. Nobody uses "gamer brand" gear.* Air flow is an optimal front to back design (cold aisle to hot aisle). Cooling is forced flow across the entire width of the chassis (multiple fans in a "line") for simplicity and reliability. On higher end servers cooling is redundant, two fans stacked together to prevent overheat in a fan failure. Redundant power supplies are also common for the same reason.
I understand time is critical but what happens when your fan or PSU dies in the datacenter? Ask anyone with colocated servers, "remote hands" time is expensive and so is downtime. There is a reason why $8K servers are built this way and lets face it a $8K mining rig is pretty much an expensive mission critical server.
Note I am not saying KNC should make "professional grade" rigs at this time, it is more a thought exercise. Come on people you should be enthusiasts. Don't you ever just brainstorm about how things can be done better? I mean Satoshi did and that is why we have Bitcoin. Still it shouldn't be taken as a bash on KNC, it has taken the server industry a couple decades to come up with optimal configurations. It just is to show what people in the IT hardware world would consider "professional grade" today.
To their credit KNC has already designed a better cooling system them BFL. The mere fact that their heatsinks and fans all face the same direction is a significant improvement. Everytime I look at a photo of a BFL minirig I just cringe. The IT geek in me wants to rip out all those stupid fans and do it right. 
This goes beyond KNC but most "consumer" branded cooling gear is just garbage for gamers to waste money on. The CFM ratings tend to be inflated and they are often more expensive then "professional grade" equipment. Delta and the like is the real deal. Boring, black, ugly, and very effective.I'm quoting this because this is a definition of waste and overkill in a mining operation.
Couple of years ago I read the report from people who did genetic programming experiments on a large scale. Genetic programming is somewhat like CPU mining: 100% CPU use, 0 disk use, very little RAM, very little network.
Firstly, for the $8k budget one could get approximately 100 off-lease but working office desktop computers. The important part instead of expensive 19" racks you would use the much cheaper industrial warehouse shelving.
No reliable components are required in any of the particular unit. One can swap the failed parts
after failure because there isn't any need to save any data or redo the partial computations.
The major areas for savings are:
1) use interruptible industrial electric power instead of the guaranted power. The cost of power where the utility can ask you to turn off your equipment when they need it more than offset the losses caused by such interruptions.
2) instead of expensive datacenter real estate use the opportunistic short term leases, e.g. the cafeteria/food court areas in underutilized office buildings. You can agree to move your farm within one week notice without much expense.
3) almost no capital expenses for the UPS. You need one or two UPSes for the private pool server that you are running and some SNMP monitoring concentrator that keeps you informed about the status of your hardware.
4) you completely don't need the advanced security of the data center. Nobody's going to sneak in and copy your hashes. The only real danger is that somebody physically steals the mining hardware. Such a security level is much cheaper, more akin to the security at the construction site.
5) natural convective cooling instead of the forced air conditioning. On the rare occasion that it is really hot outside just underclocl/undervolt your farm.
If the bitcoin mining is going to become a low-margin game then the first ones to loose money and go bankrupt will be the ones who put their mining hardware into the conventional data centers.
The answer is a resurgence of late 80's arcade halls stealthily coin mining away. Get people to pay for your electricity and hash for free!!
