Upgrade advice

Thank you Gentlemen for your direction and advice. Going to buy the SSD for sure. I have no reason to choose AMD over Intel other than to give Intel a try, last one was a Pentium. So the i3-9100 sounds okay(adequate/fine). That Spectre this is something of a concern as I have never heard of it............. Does the i3-8100 have the same vulnerability????? AMD doesn't, correct?
What benefit would I get with the m2.2280? Read something saying it was slower on boot up. SATA 6GB should be fine as far as I can tell.
Figured I'd go for 16GB of RAM, to see if that helps any.
I've used Gigabyte boards and am not unhappy. The Z390 seems to be near the top of the heap.
Will have to change gears to switch to AMD because of vulnerability
Getting close ......

Okay, the NVMe M2 goes to a PCIe dedicated slot on the Motherboard, correct. Communicating over the PCI bus is much faster than the fastest SATA. This leads us down the path of latest Generation. What does gen3X4 mean to you? Then add the notch thing and another fine mess I've gotten myself into (hope you are old enough to catch the reference).
BTW do I want smart fans?

Separate thanks for mentioning the pitfalls!!!

This might help:

Samsung NVMe SSD Product FAQs | Support | Samsung | Samsung Semiconductor Global Website

gen3 x 4 refers to generation 3, utilizing up to 4 PCIe lanes. There is a gen 3 x 2 also.

I'm not sure if NVMe drives necessarily require gen 3 x 4, but gen 3 x 4 seems to be common on current generation boards.

"Smart fans"? I assume that refers to fan speed control in some way. I just use ordinary Noctua 4 pin PWM fans and control their speed through BIOS settings. Some boards have more elegant fan control than others. All of my fans are set to "silent" mode as I want to avoid noise and am not hysterical about temperatures. None of my fans ever runs above 800 rpm. A single intake, a single exhaust, and the PSU fan. If you don't have a video card, you shouldn't have temp issues unless you have a horrid case. But some folks are temp obsessed and will go to great lengths to reduce temps from 47 to 44 as if they are in a contest.

I'm more than old enough to catch the reference..........................Ollie.

Thanks Ollie. Been updating my 1st oldest computer to W10 V1903 to see what trouble I can get into while trying to figure out my new build. I don't believe I really care that much about the M.2 NVMe drives. The Crucial SATA 6GB should be fine for a good long time IMHO!
If I get a good board I can upgrade my processor and my memory in quantity and speed if I have a mind and a need to in the future, IIRC.
Most Intel people don't worry about Spectre as far as I can see although I have been happy with AMD for a decade, well since the Athlon.
Back to researching
Glenn

How about a

GIGABYTE B450 AORUS ELITE AM4 AMD B450 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard $104
AMD Ryzen 5 2400G $134

as an alternate platform with upgrade capabilities?

CountMike said:

I'm starting a budget build for a friend and it should be finished next week, just got to see with him if price is right. It will be based on Ryzen 2400g, Asus b450 MB, 2x4GB Kingston 3200MHz memory and Samsung 860 Evo SSD, 250GB as he also has couple of 1TB HDDs. Using his old Chieftec 650W PSU and DVD drive.
Will show you the results if you are still interested. I feel that it's an ideal combo for his needs, mostly internet, entertainment and light gaming in a small package. He is now almost satisfied with his old system based on dual core AMD AM2 processor, 4GB of RAM and GT 730 GPU so this will feel like a super computer.

Yes Sir I am interested. All of the new AMDs use the AM4 sockets?
Thanks
Glenn