Hardware and software specifications design for a SharePoint Server 2013

Dear All,

I am working a designing hardware and software specifications for a SharePoint Server 2013 project with following details:

Users: 80-100

Operating System: Windows Server 2012 Datacenter

SharePoint Server: SharePoint Server Standard Edition

SQL Server: SQL Server 2012 or SQL Server 2012

1.       I referred to SharePoint 2013 hardware and software system requirements and instead of minimum requirements for App, WFE and DB servers, I increased the specifications. I did same sizing for UAT environment as well.  Can somebody feedback for these specifications if they are okay with 80-users and provide good user experience?
   
2.       We are also considering SQL Server 2014 as our back-end for SharePoint Server.  Can wechoose SQL Server 2014 instead of SQL Server 2012 for this design?
   
3.       I set up 3 tier topology for proof of concept and had 1 WFE, 1 APP Server and 1 DB server. I set up the farm manually (not using Farm Wizard) and used bareminimum service applications on the 1 WFE with Central administration. Later I ran SharePoint Product wizard on 1 App server and did not run Central Administrator on this box. I was able to view the 1 WFE server on the APP server and created Search Service application on APP server.
   
   My intention was to provision Search service application of the APP server instead. However, I when the Search service application was created on WFE and not App server.  Shall I start with APP server with Central Admin and then connect to WFE? Can please advise what I did wrong?

Thank you.

Regards,

Aroh

Aroh Shukla