I want to get a new System for Asterisk. This will be a production system, but not big budget. I am planing to use a Core 2 Duo processor and using Slackware. I will need RAM about 2 GB and big SATA drives.

The system will also be running MySQL, Apache, PHP etc, thus a multitasking processor will be helpful.

I am not sure about the asterisk RAM requirements, but putting 2 GB of ram will ensure that the system almost never uses swap space, thus reducing I/O wait.

Please recommend processor versions, motherboards etc that have no issues.

Also if there any any link, specially from intel about linux compatible motherboards, it will also help.

I can also change the distribution if required.

A box just for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_%28PBX%29 ?
Is it currently or planned to be multithreaded?
Does it use 2GB RAM in your usage scenario? What storage space requirements are you expecting?
Would it not be better with some server-related features like ECC RAM, hotswappable PSUs or UPS, etc?

Or is this a home machine you'll also be trying Asterisk on?