Whoa, haven't been back to this thread for a while. What did we decide Panther?
I trust you're going with X58/i7?
For the case, I have a Corsair 800D. I love it, but it's huge. Kinda hard to imagine before you see for the first time really. I agree w/ others, this case is made for water cooling, but I wouldn't say it's weak in terms of air cooling either. If you leave the fans stock, then yea, it's lacking a bit, especially in the GPU area. But if you put 3 fans on top and change some fan orientations, it's decent. If you decide to get the case I can tell you more about airflow directions in the 800D. Though if you plan on getting 2x GTX 480s, then you're probably better off with another case or add a fan or two on the side panel.
For the monitor, the U2711 is a fantastic monitor. Don't worry about the 16:9 ratio on this one because it's a 27" monitor, and it'll be bigger than a 24' 16:10 monitor height wise anyways. Normally I really hate 16:9 monitors b/c they seem so narrow, but I think you'll be okay here. The dot pitch is really small on this monitor, so text could be a bit hard to read. But everything will look gorgeous
For the price you have to pay though, you are probably better off w/ a 30", but 2560x1600 is a lot of pixels, and you'll need a lot of horsepower to game at a good FPS at that resolution. Also do keep in mind that the LG 30" at 1920x1200 will make things look really big. I thought about buying a Hanns-G 28" monitor before, but I got a look at it at Best Buy and all the icons/text looks pretty big at native resolution, so they'll be even bigger on a 30". If you want to emulate the effect, change the resolution on your current monitor one step down. Example: 24" 1920x1200 (16:10) -> 1680x1050, and the ratio should look about right.
*Edit: Waiting till 2011 is a valid way to go also, but I think they won't be coming out with the chips until Q3 or Q4 2011? Also, good motherboards don't really come out until a year after the chips are released anyways.