If you want as quiet and effective as possible, water cooling is a fun project. Definitely the quietest solution and it is very effective if you buy good gear. Glowing blue or green water tubes gets you the ladies too.
Well, Ok maybe not.
All said though , I didn't bother on my last PC. I just made sure there was lots of airflow. It's not quiet at all but noise wasn't a concern for it's application.
Those forums are great for help in choosing components. A bit of overkill sometimes though. Tom's Hardware Guide is another very informative sight that I like.
Regarding RAM, doubling your memory will get you much better results than waiting for faster RAM. You mentioned you are not a high end gamer so your biggest concern in RAM is in making the hard drive do as little as possible.
I'm really behind the times though so I'm mostly just commenting here to relive my PC glory days. Kinda like an old man talking about his 409 big block to a group of kids racing tricked out four bangers.
