Well it seems we were in a misunderstanding then, I apologize in case I came across all high and mighty.
Anyway, as mentioned I think you are overestimating Dolphin's GPU requirements, possibly because you are relying on an OpenGL backend. I can't tell for newer Nvidia cards, since the latest I am using is the 9600M-GT, but with AMD cards, I find DX11 and especially DX12 to deliver much, much more FPS than OpenGL. DX12 has the drawback to crash sometimes, though. It is still in early development after all.
All in all the hardware requirements for dolphin are more likely to drop than to rise, since Dolphin, Vulkan, DX12 and the drivers keep getting optimized while Wii and Gamecube games stay the way they are. In the end, I'm still aiming for passive cooling. If I didn't already have my GPU, I'd probably go for the GTX 750ti passive, it does actually manage without any fans at all, while still delivering enough performance even for games like GTA5. Which I don't play. But anyway.
Same with the CPU: My plan was looking for an existing one with TDP of 55W or less that I could cool with a big fanless cooler.
Anyway, as mentioned I think you are overestimating Dolphin's GPU requirements, possibly because you are relying on an OpenGL backend. I can't tell for newer Nvidia cards, since the latest I am using is the 9600M-GT, but with AMD cards, I find DX11 and especially DX12 to deliver much, much more FPS than OpenGL. DX12 has the drawback to crash sometimes, though. It is still in early development after all.
All in all the hardware requirements for dolphin are more likely to drop than to rise, since Dolphin, Vulkan, DX12 and the drivers keep getting optimized while Wii and Gamecube games stay the way they are. In the end, I'm still aiming for passive cooling. If I didn't already have my GPU, I'd probably go for the GTX 750ti passive, it does actually manage without any fans at all, while still delivering enough performance even for games like GTA5. Which I don't play. But anyway.
Same with the CPU: My plan was looking for an existing one with TDP of 55W or less that I could cool with a big fanless cooler.