I already talked to several people and had some advices here and there, and I thought I'd turn here for another proper check with an emphasis on cooling. So here's what this machine ought to do:-desktop model: I want to plant my 1600-1200 Dell TFT monitor right on top of it
-be silent
-be a very fast office PC with good multitasking capabilities (i.e. dozens of firefox tabs opened together with 4 excel sheets, 5 pdfs etc etc etc)
-play 1080hp content (youtube/dvd/bluray) with 40 firefox tabs etc etc opened
-play the occasional game. Dont need Crysis 5 on 8000-5000 resolution or whatever, but it would be nice to check out Starcraft II and Diablo 3 at somewhat acceptable resolutions/detail levels (i.e. not 800-600 lowest but 1280-1024 medium @ 30+ fps). No video-editing or anything of the sort.
What I have come up with so far:
(SEE BELOW - Already much changes made due to advices here)
Thanks for looking into it!!
Daniel
). So the i3 is indeed an alternative. I had chosen the x4 phenom because it adds a 30% performance (according to passmark) to the i3, which is in the same price category. I had not thought on power consumption. Why is it, like you say, lower power consumption is needed? Can't the power supply handle it? Or do you essentially mean that this CPU is really producing too much heat for so small a case? Sorry if my English is a bit crap, I am not a native speaker. 