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.
Antec are a great company, sold loads of their cases and i'm using one at the momen, the Superlanboy, never had a problem and further more, each time a client broke a piece of the case like the door on the superlan boy, Antec replaced with no questions asked.
Sonata are great cases, very...
About tinting, i will give you my views about the subject.
I've tinted car windows and computer case windows, and they do last, depends on what you use, the quality of the tint film, on a car in the sun they say 4-5 years, i would say its about right, on case inside the house, well cant even...
Excuse me, i'm not English so english isnt my mother language, but i do think that alot of this "mods" are actually modifications, but you're right there are others that are pure case construction, but even then some still use parts of other cases, like mobo trays, drive bays, buttons etc...
For car wallpaper, you can try this:
http://www.netcarshow.com/
http://www.carwalls.com
http://www.cg-cars.com
http://www.dieselstation.com
http://www.seriouswheels.com
http://streetdream.de/
http://www.wallpapergarage.com
Here is some of them, sorry for the off topic.
Nice, but just one thing, i would put that power supply on its original case, you will get alot of static, etc from it, might affect the rest of the components and on the best case scenario the sound.
Can be done, hats why peopel change the ECU chip, or even program the current one, it can be tweeked up, the diffrence is much higher on a Turbo Charged or Kompressor car, without any other changes (Meachanic) can go to +70bhp
From the pics seems a nice case, the quality isnt to good, specially the materials but depends on what you are lookig for, as for the cooling, the fans are in the right position, the 250 will surelly help, they are protected, so dust wont be a problem, or at least not many will get inside, off...