Some further thoughts:
Intel vs. AMD:
I have built half a dozen towers for myself back in the day. Well,
technically, I re-built a couple of them with new motherboards and CPUs, but in total, between fresh builds and re-builds, I made six of them. I've built several for other people as well. All of those systems were AMD-based units, from the K6 III through an Athlon64, IIRC. (It was one of those Shuttle XPC cubes with passive liquid cooling heatsink/grill combinations.) Every one of them served me well, but this time I'm thinking seriously about building an Intel CPU-based system.
Sound Subsystem:
As I understand matters — and please, anyone, set me straight if I'm wrong — even though the dedicated sound cards of old were great and all, Creative Labs equipment does not play well with GNU+Linux, and on-board audio has now advanced to the point that it's pretty decent. IIRC, there have been motherboards with integrated 5.1 or even 6.1 sound, but I'm not really looking to go that route for two reasons. First, I don't have the space for a surround rig (nor the cash to really invest in a proper one), and second, I'm planning to use my existing Logitech USB speakers anyhow.
Networking:
I built the house I live in, and at the time, I stupidly decided that I was going to go totally WiFi in my house. This has proven to be not as good of a choice. Nothing against wireless, but when you push a lot of data over the network (for example, backing up or restoring large files) it plays havoc with wireless mice and sometimes other things as well. Nevertheless, since I have myself to thank for there being absolutely no ethernet jacks in my home, that means I am going to have to go wireless with the tower. Now, one thing I
know from experience is there are a LOT of wireless adapters out there which do not play at all with GNU+Linux, much less play well with it. Can anyone give advice on a particular adapter to get? I think I'd prefer a PCI or whatever the standard mobo connection is these days) but I will entertain a USB one, if necessary. I'd just rather keep traffic off the USB bus, if possible.
Motherboards and Chipsets:
This was really the thing I was trying to get at when I started this discussion thread. And by chipsets, I am trying to include discussion on several things. Obviously, the chipset itself (northbridge, southbridge, if such things are still used), but also the BIOS and EFI subsystem, because I'd prefer to get one known to play well with folks like us who are building something custom.
Graphics:
Not to revisit this particular topic (again) but I'm really not getting the kind of answers yet that I'm looking for. In light of all the security concerns we have uncovered, say, post-2012, I'm none too happy having to run proprietary drivers. I don't like having to run the proprietary Broadcom drivers that I must on my MacBook Pro to get the wireless working. Therefore, community-generated (or manufacturer-generated source-code-available) graphics drivers would be preferable. But apart from that, only looking at this from the technical standpoint, right now, who's graphics cards work more solidly and reliably? Who's are better supported?
Enclosure:
The plan is to reuse an old Dell PowerEdge 840 case. I got this unit when a local fire department auctioned off old hardware, and as far as I can tell, this case will take a standard ATX motherboard. However, all the research I've done so far has not yet told me conclusively that this is an ATX (or some other particular) standard-compliant case (with, for the moment, the original guts still inside, sans hard drive for security reasons). Can anyone else look at this and confirm whether it's ATX, or some other form factor?
Here's a link to a unit on Amazon.
