Here's my prioritized list (most to least important):
Inexpensive.
Low power consumption.
Cool running.
.
.
.
(way down the line...)
Performance.
Ok.. so obviously you're running a VIA C3 processor? Or if not, why
not?
I've got a desktop system, so I don't care too much about power
consumption. Honestly, the difference between a 100W processor and a
20W processor adds up to pennies a month, given that most processors
are idle 99% of the time. I care about having a quiet system, but
it's not particularly difficult to keep a high-power processor cool
with large but quiet fans.
Besides which I need the heat on in my apartment for roughly 6 months
of the year, so any power not being consumed by my processor would
probably be consumed by the electrical heaters anyway :>
As for cool running? Why in the heck should that matter to me? Maybe
if you've got a laptop, but for a desktop?! Ok, if the heat is
affecting reliability than I could understand that, but there are LOTS
of other factors that can affect reliability. If the chip runs at
500C but is perfectly reliable at that temperature, it wouldn't much
bother me (though I might want a pair of oven mitts near by for those
times that I open up my case :> ).
For me, low cost is certainly important, but so is performance. But
above all I want a computer that *WORKS*. I don't want a system that
is going to give me weird quirks and bugs, I don't want applications
to crash when they don't do so on other systems, and I definitely
don't want things like blue screens. The processor, generally
speaking, has nothing to do with this directly, but the motherboard
chipset that goes alongside the processor sometimes CAN have such
effects.
