This is true[1], but especially for running Linux, I think this attitude might be shooting yourself in the foot. What I mean by that is, hardware support on Linux lags behind the closed source OS options by the very nature of Linux being open source and the developers needing access to the hardware to make anything work. Intel themselves try to get ahead of the curve, but even they are not perfect and when it comes to the trickier aspects such as power management, it often takes a few months of having the hardware in-the-wild to get things really sorted. And that's not to mention the fact that distros rarely run a bleeding edge kernel.

[1] Intel CPUs have not changed very much, instructions-per-clock wise, over the past 3 or 4 generations. You're looking at 5-10% at most for any single generation. Their GPUs have drastically improved, and the power efficiencies have improved, but since you're running Linux... well sadly, we don't tend to get the same benefits closed source peoples do in those two respects. As for SSDs, buy something with a HDD and install the SSD yourself. It's cheaper, and you'll get a far better SSD than you would when you let the OEM choose what to install.