So, I decided to buy a new machine, I'll divide the selection process into parts, and I'd like to have your input, so please, comment ! If you need some help with the french blog interface, send me a mail.

The goal is to have a new "desktop" machine, but very powerful. I want to run Gentoo on it, with a stable and unstable one (probably using the vserver technology), while having a secure home (with a raid1). It will have to run vmware (I need Windows for some accounting software for my company), and I want it to be extremely quiet (probably some watercooling). Ah, and dual-screen, because it's better :)

So, first part: processor and motherboard. Well, the choice, to have a performance machine, is between Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 X2. My choice will be the Athlon, in order to try the 64 bits. According to the AMD Model comparisons, I reduced the choice to a socket 939 processor (I have no need for sub-performance DDR2 memory), either a 4400+ (1MB of L2 cache, 2.2 GHz, 89W) or a 4800+ (1MB of L2 cache, 2.4 GHz, but 110W). I'll check what is available and at what price when everything will be done.

For the motherboard, I'm far more undecided. Reducing it to the socket 939 is good, but the choices are still overwhelming. I don't need SLI or crossfire, as I only want to do dualhead mostly for 2D (probably a Matrox Parhelia). But I want a firewire port (ieee1394), SATA 3Gb/s (sata2), at least one PCI Express x16, and classical input devices: PS2, at least.

That leaves quite a number of boards:

And probably quite a number of other cards... I'd like your opinions.