Help with new hardware decisions

[mark]

A little off topic, but I'd appreciate feedback from Gentoo users on this one. Most of the hardware reviewsare very windows/games oriented.

I have been happy with my Abit vp6 with dual pIII clocked at 933. But since the winter months came in booting has become very irratic. It can take 4 or 5 attempts before the system will boot. I have tried removing hardware and anothe hard drive. I believe I have eliminated software issues (it only seems to happen when cold, in fact it has gotten better since I put the central heating on). My current theory is its mobo/cpu or psu related. I'm betting psu.

So I have two options buy a psu and see what happens or upgrade mobo ram cpu and psu (any excuse ).

So here's the thing, what to buy. I dont play games, my most hardware bashing task is compiling although I may well play with video transcoding in the future. I really like SMP but Xeons aint cheap and I have a fealing that athlon MP are now showing there age. I'm considerring the following options; Asus PC-DL mobo with a couple of xeon 2.4's or going for the poor mans smp (hpyer threading) and getting a P4 2.4 and overclocking it to 3.0 ghz.

I just wondered what other peoples opinions were. I believe linux can really benefit from SMP and compiling software certainly does. The FSB is lower on Xeons and maybe in my case an hyperthreading p4 would be a better option.

Option 3 is to just buy a psu - I'll need it if I upgrade anyway. Then I can wait for athlon 64 and opteron prices to drop. The thing is 64's dont do smp or threading, and opterons are likely to be beyound my price for some time to come.

Open to ideas

Mark
_________________
Regards

Mark