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First of all, thank you all for your help.
I have a passive micro hfx total box mounted with a gygabite h57n-usb3 motherboard with an i3 540 micro, a 256gb tracens 2.5 sata3 ssd hard drive, 2gb kington ddr3 1333mhz memory in a module, an external passive 140w power supply with micro psu, and a sansung slim dvd.
Well, I use this as an htpc, some games for the kid (they all run) and photo and cad editing.
The micro is 65w and since I think the box doesn't support passive cooling of more than 35w, I was thinking of changing to one of the modern micros, not too expensive, to be honest (there's no room for a heatsink and besides) I'm not that knowledgeable in the field and I don't know what would be more advisable, whether to change the motherboard and modern micro (with integrated graphics since there's no room for more things in this tiny box) or if there's a micro worth getting for socket 1156 which is the one on this motherboard and that doesn't go over 35w.
Honestly, if it's worth changing the motherboard and micro, I would use the old ones to upgrade the work computers, currently a pentium 4 with intel 4 at 3GHz and a micro star ms 6728 socket 478 motherboard (for electrical calculations, office work, internet and little more) and another with an intel core 2 duo E8400 at 3GHz and an asus P5QL pro socket 775 motherboard for cad, accounting, invoicing, internet, office, etc.
I would like you to advise me completely, type of motherboard, micro and if you gain freshness and performance with ram.
Thank you for your disinterested help