Just some remarks to your posting:
But he will need a new motherboard. I agree that current AMD systems are not energy efficient, but they are "bang for the buck". Unfortunately, dependent on where he lives, the energy bill bond to AMD will remove any advantage in the mid run. This is if he uses no video acceleration. Things will change with nvidias (blobby blob) VDPAU.
3. He gets ION system and keeps the hardware. His energy bill may go up a bit (30W full load, cmmon) or may go down a bit (using htpc for media instead of main rig) and does not need to mess his computer with anything HTPC related. Price is 100$
4. He gets an intel system and sells his own. 200-250 compensated by 70-40 if he manages to sell his old system. I don't know how good intel gfx drivers are. Sandy bridge gfx is still unusable in linux right now with 1156 hardware being already abadoned and 13xx socket eating up same amount of energy in idle as AMD. Though his energy bill goes down to some good extent in the long run, true, he still will have one machine.
Yes, its efficient silent box. You can compile on it 24h/7 or just leave it for 2 days for basic setup - really not a problem, you won't upgrade further anyway and even then he can unmask only the critical packages. Or he can use gentoo-based precooked distro (calculate, sabayon xbmc etc). Or even non-gentoo precooked media-center distro. I had a friend that used Slackware on single core atom, he didn't complain. Eats barely, performs barely, heats barely, small package.
If the thread starter doesn't need more power, he should just keep his current setup - it is about two times faster than an atom system and has low power consumption, too. If he needs more power, an atom system is the wrong choice.
Of course he could change board, cpu and switch to precompiled packages, too, but he would still spend money to actually downgrade his system, which frankly makes no sense to me.
Anyway, i should get some hours of sleep now
-hanky-
P.S.: Who in germany has a power plant in the backyard?
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