For your neads a standard desktop A1200 is what you want. It's easy to add an Squirel SCSI interface to the PCMCIA port and have an external little SCSI tower for the hardware not fitting in the A1200 if needed. And if you need a tower later on there's nothing that stops you from uppgrading later if your needs change is there?
For 030 CPU's getting hot, yes they do get hot but not so hot so they can't handle it so extra cooling for those cards are not realy nessesary (ny B1230/50 Rev3 with an older version 030 ran in my A1200 prity much 24/7 for years with the expansion lid on and even on hot summerdays there wasn't any heat issues.
For the CF question I'm recalling someone estimate about 10 years worth of "normal opperation" what the hell that now might be. They do have a limit in writes but it's nothing to worry too much about.
