Of course the Pentiums of the '90s would have been fine, if it weren't for the What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away.
Although... these days we have CPU's faster than Pentiums in tiny form factors and fanless and that is not so bad.
Anyway... x86 is a horrid architecture. I'd prefer ARM7TDMI, MIPS R10000, Alpha EV5, UltraSPARC or even Motorola 68060 instead.