For what it's worth, I've had better luck with intel systems. All of my AMD systems required "fiddling" to get them stable, but none of my intel systems required any more fiddling than slapping them together and installing the basic drivers, most of which are included in most OS distributions. Every one of my AMD systems ended getting parted out due to instability, and those same components that seemed to be flaky in the AMD system worked fine when matched to an intel cpu and compatible mobo.
I only bring this up because for an SFF build, troubleshooting can be a total pain due to the small case and time consumed building and rebuilding out of the small case. For a system I don't want to crack open again, I use high quality components and an intel cpu, simply because even when the price/performance favors an AMD solution, I can't afford the time to spend troubleshooting.
Yes, this is just my own experience. Lots of AMD users are going to say I'm a hater, but no-kidding, I have owned several AMD based systems in the past because back when I had time to spend on messing with my computers, I really liked the price and performance of the AMD solutions. But on average I had to open up the case on my AMD systems at least once a month, and spend time booting/rebooting and changing drivers or other settings at least once every other week. On my current socket 775 system, I opened the case 3 times in 2 years. Once to clean out the filters and blow dust from heatsinks, once to upgrade my hard drive, and once to upgrade my cpu from dual to quad core. That's it for system maintenance. Yea I paid more for the parts but I have saved hundreds of hours of my time. My last socket 939 system was super fast when I bought it, but I went through 3 PSUs, 2 mobos, 3 cpus, 3 sets of memory, 2 HDs, 2 NICs, and 3 video cards, not to mention hours and hours finding driver combinations that would keep away the BSOD monster and put off HD data corruption. Oh yea, I had to restore from backups 5 times too, with the AMD system. I haven't done that ONCE with my intel system, and haven't swapped out a single component either.
My HTPC uses all of the surviving components from my last AMD system, and they work great... for a few days, then the system hangs, even with a fresh OS install. That's just fine for HTPC use since I don't use it too much. My daily use maching must keep working without constant maintenance though, and that's why I switched back to intel after many years of using AMD. My windows home server system is based on a 10 year old celeron running at 1ghz, and it has run 24/7 for a year without a single system hang. I never had an AMD system that could do that.
As for components, I've also had great luck with western digital hard drives. Again from the maintenance point of view, the WDC caviar black hard drives have an extra 2 years warranty and seem to be more durable in my experience. They're fairly fast and you'll only spend an extra $20 or so for the drive vs. other ones with lower performance and lesser warranty. I haven't had a WD Caviar Black fail on me, ever. I've had a number of other drives go bad, but never had a WD drive fail. If you want to save some money, I got a WD caviar blue 1TB drive and it also seems to be very good. Decent speed, quiet, and cheaper than the caviar black drives. If you are going to use a 2.5" drive in your SFF build, the WDC scorpio black notebook drives are very nearly as fast as many desktop drives. They're quiet, don't use much power, have decent performance, and have a good warranty.
Back to the original post though, I'd go intel for a system I didn't want to fiddle with, based on 20 years of fiddling around with computers. I'm done playing with computers, now I just want to USE them. And I've had a lot better luck with overall system stability and durability with intel systems no matter what generation of intel or AMD cpu/mobo/chipset I've used. AMD systems are cheaper and can be very fast, but all of the ones I've purchased have required nearly constant fiddling to keep them running, even when I use the highest quality parts I can find.
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