1) I own a 690, its a good case and the fans arent bad off course you can buy better ones either with less noise or better air pressure.
2) as for the fans the front is always intake, the side are intake also the bottom intake the top exhaust and the back exhaust
I'm a computer tech for 15 years dont smoke, hate in fact, can assure you that smoke makes the dust "stick" to things, which might sound strange but its true.
No problem didnt took me much time, just had to find the measures of the board and rack case.
In any case you can make the board boot without a video card, just take the "Alt on all errors" off the bios and then you can remote admin the server like swatbat said.
If you really need to...
With that case as example, it wont work, you will end up with something like this:
Maybe you should email them about your problem, i'll look into my suppliers for you and see if there is any brand that has a 1U case that fits that board.