Looking for recommendations for direct attached storage. Criteria: Quiet 8TB or more (or dual drive 16tb) Ideally thunderbolt 3 but usb c of some sort would probably do.

Blackmagic Multidock (new version, thunderbolt 3) + vertical wall mount rack. No fans, mounts easily to a wall for a "no-profile" space savings, and then just insert 4x 2tb SSD's, use mac OS X to create a raid array out of it. It's what I did and it's perfect.

That all sounds very expensive.

I mean, cheap wasn't in your criteria 😉

True.

It’s actually the most affordable option.

Multidock is like $595. SSD 2TB around $199 each. Wall mount, around $100. Cheaper than most other options and more useful.