System upgrade needs video card help

[karmasoft]

I'm going to front-load my post with the question: What video card should I use?

Options:

1. XFX GeForce GTX 260 (five years old -- currently in service)
2. Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 (two years old -- can pull from HTPC rebuild)
3. Something new, please tell me. It should be near-silent and PCIe 3.0.

Since deciding to build a new HTPC I've also decided to upgrade my main system. Before upgrading I decided to run NovaBench on both my existing HTPC and main rig.

Main = 811
HTPC = 342

Pretty painful considering my wife's 4 year old iMac = 987

My needs are pretty minimal. For games I play UrT and chess. =/ My current rig setup is as follows:

Lian Li mid tower ATX case
AMD Phenom II X4 920
Gigabyte AM2 motherboard
XFX GeForce GTX 260 video card (linked above)
4 GB of DDR2 1066 memory
2x 74 GB Western Digital Raptors in raid 0
Seasonic 600W PSU
Windows Vista Home Premium

This system has run 24x7 since writing about it on this forum five and a half years ago. Its been remarkably stable. For the most part it runs quietly but I'm aiming for near-silence and less power consumption (since I leave it on all the time). I plan on re-using the Lian Li case (its awesome despite its vintage) and either the GTX 260 or Radeon 5450 until a replacement is determined.

I plan to cannibalize an Intel 120 GB SSD from my old HTPC that already has Windows 7 installed on it. I'll also pull the pair of 300 GB Maxtor HD's from the HTPC and can also keep using my Raptor HD's for extra storage.

Related power supply question -- should I keep using the Seasonic 600W that I linked above? Its pretty quiet and has been going strong for 9 years spanning two systems. I can also cannibalize a modular Cooler Master 600W from my HTPC. Would the following, "new stuff," benefit from a new PSU?

Here are the new parts I've ordered:
Intel i3 4130T processor ($127.99)
MSI Z87 PC Mate 1150 mobo ($52.99 with promo code and rebate)
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 2x 4 GB ($77.99 after rebate)

So far $258.97 in new money dispatched. I can spend more on a video card upgrade and super quiet PSU if necessary. Thoughts?

 

[cybereality]

The GTX 750 ti is a decent affordable card that can still play some games on it. And you'll get the modern features (like video decoding, DirectX11, etc.) and stuff not available on a 260 card.

 

[karmasoft]

@cybereality, thanks for the recommendation. Been reading up on those cards since your post and decided to pull the trigger. Also did some noise investigation on my rig (following this video) and discovered the 140mm front and 120mm rear fans were the loudest components. Going to change those out too.

Once I read up on the multitude of fan choices I thought it made sense to spend +$10 more for some quality fans. The Noctua website provides a super helpful product breakdown which helped reduce the confusion of their various product naming codes. Using MSI's Z87 mobo manual download, I could identify where the system fan plug-ins are located and how many pins each one uses (4 or 3). This made choosing which fan for front vs rear really straight forward.

Added to the list:
EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2 GB ($129.99 after rebate)
Noctua 140mm fan ($22.95)
Noctua 120mm fan ($19.99)

It turns out the venerable Seasonic PSU is the quietest component in my system so unless something comes up I plan on re-purposing it yet again. Total cost of this build (so far): $431.90.