New mobo and CPU. Any heads up before I install?

[David Whyte]

Hi list.

Some of you may remember back (quite) a few months to when I was
having sporadic lockup issues with my server.  Well it has gotten to
the point where I bought a new motherboard, CPU and RAM today to
(hopefully) replace the offending piece of hardware.

I am going from a Sempron 2400 with VGA nVidia TNT2 graphics to a
Pentium D 925 (i.e. dual core) with onboard Intel Extreme 2 graphics.

I imagine I should be using a different kernel and everything to use
the CPU to it's full advantage but I have no idea which one I should
be using.

Does the list have any recommendations for moving forward?  I would
prefer to to have to do a clean install if I can at all help it :)  I
am also happy with the Dapper installation that is currently running
on the box, but will move to Edgy if there is a major benefit and it
is painless enough :)

Regards,
Whytey

FTR, the new hardware is:
Asus P5PE-VM mobo
Intel Pentium D 925 CPU
Corsair 512 DDR 400 memory

Existing hardware to be put back on the mobo includes:
3 X Avermedia DVB-T cards
3 X IDE HDD's
1 X DVD burner.