Linux is just way more stable. Ive had miner executable uptimes of 60-70 days. Thats not system uptime, thats literally how long EWBF ran uninterrupted. In my experience, ive managed about 300 windows rigs and we had to constantly reboot like 20-30 a day no matter what we do to them.
This is kind of true even with windows 7. You gotta script everything so it auto-reboots when necessary (if it doesn't lock up out-right), auto-starts mining at power on, etc... With windows 10 you need to prevent it from auto-rebooting with every damn update.
Really the hardware specs mean less than the results of the equation hashrate/price. You can go cheap on just about everything but the GPU and get a good ratio. But profits are dropping a lot this year I feel like. Everybody and their cousin seems to have gotten into the mining game now. I remember when I could make $8 or so per day per GPU. I haven't been buying new GPU's this year but my best cards are down to like $2 a day now.