It is amazing how little is needed to play older games. My desktop is seven years old but with the upgraded RAM and the three year old GPU it can play most any game from the 2000 decade and a few more recent.
@ambarishrh Super jealous of your funding there! If it were my $$$$ I'd get myself a nice Cleo or Sager or other custom setup. You can get just an insane machine for that money. http://www.xoticpc.com/
Suse is great. It's the big German distro that is the dominant Linux in Europe. It's very much on par with Red Hat as being fully supported and enterprise ready.