Regarding your 2nd point: Secondly, how well would an i7 Haswell handle a pair of 290s in Crossfire compared to an i5?
With i7 Haswell (not Haswell-E or Ivy Bridge-E) you would still be limited to a total of 16x PCI-Express 3.0 lanes shared across both cards. Many reviews online suggest that...
Windows might require reactivating (not sure if Windows 8/8.1 have different activation requirements when hardware changes.)
I migrated from an AMD CPU + AMD board to an i7-2600K + Z68 board. Windows 7 booted fine and I had to uninstall only one AMD driver because it was causing a video driver...
i7-860 can also be overclocked in a more traditional manner by changing the baseclock. Sandy/Ivy/Haswell all require a K series CPU to really overclock.
Haswell's increased IPC is offset by slightly higher OC's of IVB chips, and even higher OC's of SB chips. Unless the new instructions are important to your, Haswell-IVB-SB after OC are pretty much neck to neck performance wise.
Second the 6450 if the price is the same. If the 5450 is significantly cheaper, you can go with it. Newer card usually (Fermi was the exception) means newer architecture, lower power draw, less heat, and longer driver support.
i3-SB is a nice chip and all, but there is no point in more money on it and a new platform that will go in a few months. The i3 doesn't have turbo boost so no overclocking for it at all. It would be the least cost effective choice. No OC, dying platform, more expensive.
Noob question... But what is the best way to control the Pi when it's an htpc streaming things from the web?
I know DLNA can be controlled from other devices; I mean finding flash/html5 video online.
Chipsets come on motherboards which really only differentiate themselves with various feature tiers. Stock performance across the chipsets would be the same or so close as to be unnoticeable.
AS5 or Mx2 both give me the same temps. Mx2 doesn't have the break in period and wont short anything so I prefer it over AS5. Always applied it via rice grain size in middle method FWIW.
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