Well, according to computing lore the place where you need to spend the most money is in the case, power supply and then motherboard. The case and the psu are expected to last the longest, then the mobo (nowadays these do change rapidly).

That's the thing about the case. Whether you need it or not, only you know the answer to that question. It is personal preference, but I'm assembling the next edition of a server tower with a ton of hotswap drives, so it makes sense for me, plus i like how it looks. That said, I think something like the FT02 fits you better.

For SSD, get this one: Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 256 SATA_6_0_gb Solid State Drive MZ-7PD256BW: Electronics it's just out, people are already sayin it's the holy grail.

For hard disks, get two of these and run them in RAID0 Newegg.com - Western Digital WD RE4 WD1003FBYX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Enterprise Hard Drive -Bare Drive . Get two more down the road and make your raid 0+1

Yes, thunderbolt is new and there are not a lot of peripherals for it. That is the early adopter tax. But, it's the future according to Intel and Apple.