What onboard video chipset can handle CS: Source full detail?

[guht]

Originally posted by: alyarb
you still haven't told us much about your system. just list everything you have and we'll go from there.

Apparently I didnt know my own system, which is quite sad, but in my own defense I built it 2+ years ago, and havent looked at it much since. ;-)

Here are the specs:

Motherboard - ECS C51GM-M (V1.0) AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
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http://www.newegg.com/product/...x?item=N82E16813135010


CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Windsor 2.4GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core 90nm Processor
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819103751


GPU - XFX PV-T80G-GHE9 GeForce 8800 GTS (320 MB) PCI Express Video Card
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http://www.xpcgear.com/pvt80ghe9.html


RAM - 2 x 1GB Patriot DDR2 Memory
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820220174


HD - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136218


PSU - Thermaltake toughpower W0117RU 750W
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817153036


CPU FAN - ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835118019

Case - Antec P180
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811129154

 

[Qbah]

I had the exact same PSU and CPU cooler in my old Pentium-D build, that's with my parents now. Both of them aren't terribly noisy, but far from quiet (and I have a comparison to what I own now). I'm afraid you won't be able to do anything about those two sources of noise.

Did you change the Tri-Colors of your P180 to Nexus fans? Standard fans in the P180 are pretty sucky when noise in concerned - even on medium.

Anyway, since you want a completely new build, we built a HTPC with a friend. It had the Antec Fusion Black HTPC case, ASUS mATX mobo (M3A78-VM) , a Phenom II 810 and 4GBs of RAM. He exchanged the Tri-Colors (Antec puts them everywhere ) for Nexus fans, put a Scythe Shuriken (sp?) on his CPU (that thing is DEAD silent!) and bought a nice Samsung HDD (all with my recommendation) and couldn't be happier. And he's very picky with noise. His HTPC is in his living room, by his TV, not covered by anything and you almost can't hear the box running Just a REALLY low humming of electronics, mostly. Open a window, even a bit and there's no way you can hear it, even from under a meter away. If I would recommend anything, that would be it. You can add a passive 9800GT (or a 9600GT) in there and attach a Nexus on low to it just to be safe with the temps (as it IS a HTPC case after all...) - and your quiet PC for browsing and gaming is all set Just don't expect it to run Crysis maxed

This is how the case looks like. Pretty slick imo

EDIT: He's running the 400W passive Fortron PSU in it. There's a nice review on SPCR of it - read EDIT2

EDIT2: That's the PSU he's running, my bad

 

[DominionSeraph]

Use Rivatuner to underclock your 8800 GTS. A small underclock makes a big difference with that thing. Go with a max underclock for 2d mode. (it idles hot at stock clocks, and it doesn't need that horsepower to run windows.)

Make sure Cool & Quiet is working.

Try undervolting your processor.

With this, you should be able to take out most of your case fans.
I ran a stock X2 5200+ with an 8800 GTS with only a stock CPU HSF and 120mm PSU fan. The 8800's fan only went to medium-low in 3d games with a 50Mhz underclock.

Edit: Just for fun, I decided to undervolt my current 5200+. Since I'm on a Dell board with no bios support, I'm using RightMark CPU Clock Utility. It was a little confusing at first, but once I figured out to use the Performance On Demand profile with everything checked to get standard Cool & Quiet functionality, it came together. Currently stable at 0.9v at 1GHz (stock 1.1v) and 1.225V at 2.6GHz (stock 1.35). Temps are 9 degrees cooler running prime95 @ 2.6GHz and my cpu fan doesn't spin up to high (which it does at 1.35v). (My heat sink doesn't have thermal paste on it so the cpu ramps up in temperature more than it should when under load.)

Edit2: That corrupted Windows. Whoops. On the back end of a 3 hour reinstall now.
"Just for fun," didn't turn out to be much fun after all.