This month I built two systems with identical hardware component (except for the case). Here’s the list of components:

Cases often don’t meet my high requirements. Many cases are sharp-edged, bad designed (inside and outside), use cheep plastic, and/or vibrate, because the hard drives confer their vibration to the case. The Sugo SG02-F case is not perfect, but I will recommend it. The Silentium T11 case has no shard edges, but I won’t recommend it. Too much plastic and optical not appealing.
You probably have to replace the boxed CPU heat sink and use a better power supply if you want a silent system.
How well do these components work with Ubuntu 10.10 (and probably other recent GNU/Linux distributions)? Perfectly. Everything that I tested worked:
- The USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports work with everything plugged in (mouse, keyboard, flash drives).
- Audio works (only stereo output tested; 5.1 sound was available in Pulseaudio)
- 2D and 3D graphics work with the free (libre) radeon driver (Compiz runs)
- LAN works