If the machine is going to be dedicated (linux); hen it's the cheapest way just to use the standard mobo controllers and cheap-ass expansion cards. My 2.66 ghz p4 machine handles it just fine. I can always upgrade and alter the main hardware as long as I have MDADM running, I'm good. Or any...
I've recently moved my wrt54g v2 over to tomato from dd-wrt. It seems to be a pretty good amount faster IMHO. I am still tweaking the QoS but the Qos on DD-wrt brought it it's knees.
I run a network for 6 individual machines, a media center (very little traffic), a file server (most traffic...
It's a really fast engine that makes windows snappy. There are features much like OSX expose for switching programs and transparencies much faster. I personally disabled all of the wobbly type effects for smooth and efficient ones. The transparency layers and the cube also help to make me more...
I'd suggest you check out the clean wiring thread and really try to hide them. It will give the windowed area a much more polished look to match the rest of the case.