It has been 4 years since I last built a system, and I'm trying to come up to speed now that the 10 year old system my wife has been using finally went south. I like to play games on occasion and also do some video editing using my own scripts and ffmpeg. What I want to do is create a fairly decent system to use as my new machine and give my wife my 4 year old AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200. Even that machine is overkill for her because all she does on it is browse the web and check email.

Since I've been out of touch with the latest in hardware for several years I'm trying to get up to speed in time to order the components and have them delivered in time for me to build the new system next week. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm looking hard at a couple of Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs. If I understand them correctly they have open source 3D drivers for the onboard video. From what I've read these originally had problems but now are working well. However, if you have any information to add on that I would appreciate it. Also, I'm not entirely sure if the models with "Turbo Boost" like this one would behave as designed in Linux. Does anyone know what I should expect here? The other Sandy Bridge CPU that I'm leaning towards is this one. It looks like the dual core CPU might actually have better video than the quad core, in addition to running cooler and being cheaper.

I'm also interested in any alternative suggestions. I'm not afraid of AMD but from what I can tell the newer MOBOs don't have much in the way of Nvidia onboard GPUs. For this build I would prefer to start with onboard graphics.

Is there anything else I should consider before pulling the trigger? Thanks!

For many of the Intel chips the graphics are actually in the same 'package' as the CPU now and not on the chipset. If your budget allows I'd go with the first choice and spend another $60-$70 on an add-in graphics card as even a very budget friendly card will still smoke any integrated graphics at about anything, and driver support is quite good except for the bleeding edge (about like you'd expect.) Take a look over at tomshardware for the graphics card linup, should give you a good starting point.

The new AMD chips have a CPU and GPU on the same die (the Intel ones are two chips in the same package, like they did with the first "quad-core" cpus they released.) While AMD matches the performance of the Intel chips with the same specs the CPU portion is quite weak with a very good integrated graphics core. So when adding a graphics card to an AMD system it will be slower than an equivalent one from Intel. As a quick aside, this state of affairs sucks for prices and our wallets. Intel needs a real competitor.

So, good job going Intel. If you can afford a basic graphics card now get the 4core one, if you can't get the 2 core one with better graphics.

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Thanks travisdh1! I can probably get by fine on the lesser integrated video anyway, and if I decide I need more I can pick up a $60-$70 graphics card. Last I knew Nvidia was the clear choice for linux because the ATI drivers weren't as good. Is this no longer the case?

Your feedback has me taking a serious look at the quad core. I'll probably optimize my video processing scripts to take better advantage of that if I do. My only remaining hesitation is the extra wattage/heat 95W for the quad core vs 65W for the dual core. I know in the scheme of things 95W is still pretty good, but it is 50% more energy/heat than the other CPU. I'm probably overly cautious about that after using one of the last generation 32bit AMD chips which were notoriously hot in an under-ventilated case for my first build. I don't recall the wattage on that one but it was pretty bad. I'm getting an Antec 300 case with this build so I'm guessing either chip will be easily cooled by the massive top venting fans on that case. Do you happen to know what the difference in power consumption would be between the two chips at idle? I like to leave the machine on so that is my remaining consideration (electric bill, A/C in the summer) including fan noise. The 32 bit AMD chip used to heat up my home office quite a bit. If it only draws the bulk of the extra power when under a load that would be ideal.

I found another option for a little more money. It is a quad core with the 2000 graphics but 65W.

Intel Core i5-2400S Sandy Bridge 2.5GHz (3.3GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 65W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I52400S.

My main question is if the turbo boost will work in linux. I'm not sure if this is regulated by the chip itself or the kernel. From the searching I've done it sounds like it works, but anyone who knows and confirm this would be doing me a huge favor.

Sadly I'm not sure how well the turbo function on the newer i3/i5/i7 Intel chips works, though I'd assume it works as intended by now. The only processors that I have personally worked with that use a feature like that is an AMD PhenomII X6 1075T, and that works exactly as intended. It will clock all the way down to 800MHz when a core is not being used and will run faster than stock when 3 or fewer threads are running (that doesn't happen on my computer very often so I'm not remembering the speed it'll get up to.)