You need a Fortress in a Dragon Age...

[bean1975]

So. My current system is nice and quiet but won't run Dragon Age (8400GS...). Not to mention Diablo III and Starcraft II (not yet out, so what? ) So here is my shopping cart -- to be executed, hopefully, in December:

Silverstone FT-02
Two 4770 Passive (if three 180mm coolers are not enough then what is?)
MSI K9A2 CF-F V2 (is there a cheaper CF mobo? This is $80)
AMD Athlon II x2 250 (This is just dual core, but still, 3GHz should be enough)
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 or a Minja?

[lm]

I did not find any questions in your post, so I'll ask one from you:

Wouldn't it be enough to buy a 5870 or 5850 and put that in your old system?

[bean1975]

Oh questions... everything

a) is this going to fly? No fans on the GPUs and the CPU just the chassis fans?
b) is there are a better way to push some serious amounts of pixels while keeping it quiet?
c) given that the recommended CPU is a "AMD Phenom II X3 Triple-Core 2.8 GHz or greater.. " and I am on SPCR what's the best solution? I hoped the 250 at 3GHZ (and 65W) and two cores would cut it. There is the X3 435 which is 95W and the X4 605e which is a nice 45W (so the higher price can be offset by a somewhat cheaper heatsink) but I have my doubts over a 2.3GHz even if it's quad.
d) so which heatsink for c) ?

(the older system is a 4850e with a simple 740G board. That's not much)

[SebRad]

Hi, I’m not very up on CPUs at the moment but watch the AMD chip specs as the lower ones have less cache than the higher chips.
X2 250 is 3GHz, 128KB + 1024KB for £51
Phenom II x2 550 is 3.1GHz, 128KB + 512KB + 6MB for £73
Proportionally that’s quite a lot more money but not that much in absolute terms, also the Phenom is Black Edition so multiplier unlocked for easy over-clocking, not that in passive setup you’ll be doing much!
Good article on both CPUs at Anandtech. For playing games and general use, on a budget, fast dual core probably still best.

For the heatsink I’d suggest a (full) Ninja or Thermalright HR01 as some of the best passive / very low air flow heatsinks

On the video card side it looks like HD4770 Crossfire is similar performing to HD4890 for similar cost. Do you want one hot card or two less hot ones, not sure which will be easier / cheaper to cool quietly, unless you can get passive HD4770 to work in crossfire? May need a quiet fan blowing over them, not sure if slow case fans at bottom will be enough, probably would have to try and see.
With a single card you can probably use a cheaper motherboard.

The new HD5850 will give you more performance than either with very low idle and reasonable load power demands, it is however expensive and in short supply.
The HD5770 looks not to offer great price/performance, although does have good power figures and support for DX11 etc. You might think one HD5770 now and one later when cheaper or can afford as HD5770 CF is between HD5850 and HD5870 performance.

On the whole I think it’s best to have quiet fans on components rather than aim for passive / semi-passive. For example a 500rpm Scythe fan on CPU cooler is going to be in-audiable compared to the case fans, HDD(s) etc and provide much better temps than with out it.

The case looks fantastic, I’m very tempted and it looks like going to be available very soon. The cheapest option would be new CPU & video card for your old PC but if you want to build a new system…

Good luck, Seb

[Cistron]

So. My current system is nice and quiet but won't run Dragon Age (8400GS...). Not to mention Diablo III and Starcraft II (not yet out, so what? ) So here is my shopping cart -- to be executed, hopefully, in December:

Silverstone FT-02
Two 4770 Passive (if three 180mm coolers are not enough then what is?)
MSI K9A2 CF-F V2 (is there a cheaper CF mobo? This is $80)
AMD Athlon II x2 250 (This is just dual core, but still, 3GHz should be enough)
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 or a Minja?

I'm running Dragon Age at 1680x1050 on a single HD3870 without problems. CPU is an E2160 ~2.7GHz, though I doubt that's the limiting factor. I don't believe that Diablo III or StarCraft II will be that demanding either.

I'd buy a HD5850 or even a 5770/5750 and have a look before you scale up the rest of the PC. I'm pretty confident your good ol' 4850e will do the job. Besides, who knows how much longer Blizzard will sit on its hands before the games are finally released. SC2's development is dragging on for ages.

[Carpetsmoker]

I am running Dragon Age smooth and Without problems at 1680x1050 with Medium quality on my:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Asus Geforce 9600GT
2GB RAM
Windows XP

Which should be *significantly* less powerful then your setup ... My first thought would be that you might have some problem with your crossfire setup. Try running on just one card.

[hybrid2d4x4]

Besides, who knows how much longer Blizzard will sit on its hands before the games are finally released. SC2's development is dragging on for ages.

Very true; they recently announced that "D3 won't be out in 2010- maybe in 2011-2012".

More on topic: the 8400GS is your biggest problem by far. lm's post is spot on. I'm not sure why you feel compelled to get a new motherboard just to run crossfire with lower-mid-range cards. The CPU you propose is clocked only 20% faster than your current one, and the new architecture doesn't buy you more than another 20%, so I'm not sure the small 44% bump in CPU power justifies a whole new platform. I'd just get one new vid card, such as the 5770 or 5750, and see how it runs on your current CPU/motherboard. Overclock the CPU to reduce the bottleneck (if it happens), and if that still doesn't meet your needs, then I'd get the new mobo and skip over to a X3 or X4.