Quick thread update
I will soon be purchasing an FX-6300 hexacore processor at 3.5 Ghz stock (overclockable to around 5.1 Ghz) to replace my aging Athlon II.
On a side note, I'll add another "Rig". This little champ is a microcontroller called an Arduino Uno. I have 2 different versions of the Unu, but they are relatively similar, plus or minus a few GPIO pins.
Arduino Uno
Microcontroller ATmega328(This is the CPU)
Operating Voltage 5V
Digital I/O Pins 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins 6
Flash Memory 32 KB (ATmega328) of which 0.5 KB used by bootloader: This is like tiny hard drive of sorts
SRAM 2 KB (ATmega328) (just 2 KB of RAM for the little guy to use =D )
Clock Speed 16 MHz (Beastly thing ain't it? haha)
You can control motors, play pong (woot!), drive small LCDs, and much much more. I used to have the newer one I own host a local web page... good times!