I was recently looking into upgrading my HW, and found many of the posts a bit outdated to what is available in the high end market. Please comment on any of the following and anything else you so wish to introduce. Perhaps this could be a useful RECENT hardware sticky for a lot of folks.

+SuSE Linux 64bit: Is its driver support as vast as its 32bit counterpart?

+Are the latest intel chipsets supported (>915G)

+What about DDR2 (if it matters at all)?

+Nforce4 vs VIA which is recommended?

+For high end x86 boards, which boards have most folks had the most success with, in particular, to ASUS and Intel.

+ATI or Nvidia, with all the problems with fglrx in the past have there been equivalent issues with Nvidia. Have ATI issues been ironed out?

As you know, the pace of technological change is so fast these days that the definition of "high end" is pretty fluid - whatever the latest and greatest is today, by tomorrow there will be something better. In any event, here's my 2 cents:

1. 64 bit support is emerging, but we still live in a 32 bit world. No doubt that in a few year's time 64 bit will be the standard, but we're not there yet.
2. FWIW I'm not aware of any compatibility issues
3. What about it?
4. Some folks consider nforce to be better than via, others have the opposite opinion, personally I think it's a pretty subjective call, and there is no right or wrong answer. To me this question is a lot like "which hard drive manufacturer is best?" -- I think a lot of your viewpoint will be based on your own experience rather than any universally recognized standards.
5. As for mobo's, all I can say is that I use an Intel board and would recommend it. It's about 2 and half years old though, so at this stage it wouldn't be considered high end
6. As the owner of an ATI card, I have spent many, many, many hours trying to get their drivers installed properly, but have had only mixed results (at best). Again, I think this is a subjective call, but perhaps a good way to evaluate things is to search for threads here at LQ that discuss problems with installing ATI drivers, and to search for threads that discuss problems with installing nVidia drivers. I think you'll spot a clear difference.

Good luck with things regardless of whatever decision(s) you make -- J.W.

Is the support for DDR2 the same for DDR. Intel boards with the 945 chipset do not seem to support DDR in specs provided on sites such as newegg. Maybe the information just was not provided, as I haven't check the manufacturers product site.

Yes everyone seems to have great opinions on Intel boards, although they do run a little more expensive than other major manufacturers. Honestly I'm looking for more quality over quantity. After all, how many more PowerDVD CD's do I really need. I'm about to build my second PC and this time I want to do "everything" right. I plan to use all my existing hardware with exception to my motherboard processor and case. I hope to get more mileage from this build because, its just over 2 yrs old.

On my last build, the case was just a piece of crap, and the power supply debatable. I was was leaning more towards an ASUS board since AMD 64 is supported. Intel 64 bit processors are just to expensive. One thing that has bothered me is that Intel chips are getting expensive again. In fact last year they were about the same as AMD and in some cases a better buy.

Something that I have noticed, and maybe others have to, is how hot, and consequently loud AMD systems typically are. Yeah, if your using quiet everything it may not be so loud, but using just standard fans and stock coolers they are just loud PC's. Anyone I know who has a Dell (=Intel) PC, claims that they are quiet as a church mouse, and you know they are not using any high end cooling. My folks have a new 3.2 GHz Dell dimension, and I have difficulty determining if it is even on. Is it possible that, we build our own PCs using too many fans? Maybe certain chipsets just generate a lot of ambient heat?

I have an ASUS board right now but I'm a little weary on another one. As mentioned in my earlier post it being paried with an ATI videao card may be the cause of my LCD monitor issues.

It took me just about as long to get my ATI card to work, using the fglrx driver. The posts on such issues are vast, especially for windows folks using the cat drivers and LCD monitors. I'm not entirly sure how stable it is since I have yet to do any hardcore gaming, but the gears test provide decent scores.

I probably won't start buying equipment till after the summer. By then things will likly change.

Any thoughts and succeses that people might have had when they built their Linux PC, please put your 2 cents in.

I hoping to turn this thread into a single good reference for Linux PC builds, by providing suggestions, tips and recomended hardware combinations that people have tremedous success with little effort.