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Help building a Silent Gaming PC

CPUguy101

Typically i'm on here giving others advise but this time i need some help. 

 

Budget for this build is $1500 and will be used primary for gaming the friend i'm building this for games at 1440P and 144hz he is VERY picky about noise and also designs music for a living i really want this build to be amazing as he will use it for gaming and work. 

 

I'm personally kind of picky about noise too which is why he wants me to build it lol i did some bad choices on my build from not paying enough attention i bought the supernova 3 from EVGA which for sure makes more noise then the Noctua fans that i have in my case and my GPU which is the worst part of my build has MAJOR coil whine sounds like my PC is trying to make music haha. Its a Gaming X GTX 1080 from MSI. 

 

Anyways that's where i messed up on my build plus i got the R6 with a side window instead of the damping materal which i will be getting for him or if someone here has experience with be quiet cases perhaps that's a better idea? I personally only dealt with leaf blower NZXT(they sure look nice) cases and amazing Fractal Design cases.  

 

Any help here would be great also we would prefer Amd and Nvidia for the build. 

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7 minutes ago, SMBGUY said:

 

So he's building an entirely new PC?

Does it need it for only gaming/music stuff? As that doesn't need more than an R5 3600.

It doesn't seem like he would need Cuda at all, because an RX 5700 XT is about the best value higher end GPU right now, and Sapphire just released this beautiful thing.

If you want the lowest noise floor possible you'd want something like a pure base 600 from Be Quiet!, but then you want the biggest heatsinks for the CPU/GPU you can find due to the limited air flow, like this one.
 

 

I edit my posts a lot, Twitter is @LordStreetguru just don't ask PC questions there mostly...
 

Spoiler

 

What is your budget/country for your new PC?

 

what monitor resolution/refresh rate?

 

What games or other software do you need to run?

 

 

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Yes it needs to be used for both he already has a separate DAC/AMP that he has been using on his Laptop for production i'm confident even a 3600 would beat that Laptop lol. 

 

I was thinking about possibly getting a fanless cooler and running the fans in the case at 500 RPM from Noctua or be quiet as my fans are super quiet at that level but i really don't think the GPU needs to be super quiet as he "probably" doesn't care much when he games but when he doesn't it needs to be dead silent basically. Maybe 300 RPM on the heatsink would be ok. 

 

I personally don't mind my AIO from corsair i don't even hear it but he is more picky. 

 

Really hesitant to go with Amd for the GPU as it uses more power and could stress the PSU more and require more fan noise, But i do like the 5700 XT. Who knows about coil whine i had so many GPU's in the past 20 years and like 1/3 of them have been bad at coil whine. 

 

 

Perhaps soon Amd might have something for me to replace my 1080 however and i love that GPU you showed! Looks amazing

85f6446d-dbde-49b5-ba73-a65b53d9ac73.png

 

WOW that is good i think you are right man that is the GPU for this build he will love the fact that it just came out too

 

See i would have never even payed attention to that coming out i was just going to get a 2070 for him, you simply cannot beat that noise to performance ratio unless you take the cooler off and do some custom cooling 

fannoise_load.png

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Lastly to anyone helping i really do appreciate the help and i know it seems like i'm being anal about noise but sadly its just the way it is. 

 

I wish i could personally touch and put together builds without having to resort to asking help but we don't have that luxury 

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I also prefer my PC to be as quiet as possible, and have experimented with it a lot over the past 10 years or so.  From what I've found:

 

A good quality air cooler will always be quieter than a water cooler unless you're overclocking to a level where an air cooler can no longer handle it.  Noctua's are some of the best around for CPU cooling, but if your CPU isn't especially hot, you can get something like a cheap Gammaxx tower cooler and swap the cheap fan for a nicer one if needed.

 

For graphics cards, the blower style coolers make more noise than the multi-fan coolers, so I prefer multi-fan types (MSI and EVGA do very well on these).  You do have to make sure the case is a little better ventilated to compensate for the card's lack of exhaust.

 

Just about any case can be a "silent" case depending on the parts you use and how they're installed.  One designed for silence will be quietest of course, but it's possible to work with a cheap one and make it just as or nearly as quiet.

 

If you have a lot of mounts for fans, install a bunch and run them at low RPM.  For my PC, the case was designed for style over silence, but with 4 120mm fans running at 500RPM, it's inaudible unless I put my ear on it (I turn them up to 1,000 when under load, and it's still fairly quiet).  More fans running at low speed are quieter than fewer fans running at high speed.

 

Also, for intake fans, don't install them directly against a mesh or grill.  Try adding spacers to get them at least 3/8" away from the mesh/grill, which will significantly cut down turbulence noise.  When used for intake, honeycomb grills sound oddly similar to a swarm of bees unless you space the fan away from it.  Rubber pins can also help by reducing or eliminating motor and vibration noise through the case.

 

SSDs are of course way quieter than HDDs, but if an HDD is in use, try finding a way to soft mount it.  For instance, get a 2.5" laptop HDD instead of a 3.5", and use soft mounts to mount in in the 3.5" bay.

 

I hope this all helps!

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1 hour ago, SMBGUY said:

Lastly to anyone helping i really do appreciate the help and i know it seems like i'm being anal about noise but sadly its just the way it is. 

 

I wish i could personally touch and put together builds without having to resort to asking help but we don't have that luxury 

You don't really want a fanless cooler, and AMD doesn't currently use more Power than the nvidia counter parts. That was Vega and only if you really overclocked it. Hard to beat that GPU though for low noise scenarios, place holder in the build as it's not on the part picker yet. not sure if it's even at retail yet...

You can just about fit the 8 core CPU in that budget.

Overkill PSU so it doesn't even have to turn on it's fan under load.
 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VWnttp

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($329.00 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler  ($89.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME X570-P ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($167.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB THICC II Ultra Video Card  ($449.99 @ Newegg)
Case: be quiet! Pure Base 600 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($89.00 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $1424.85


 

I edit my posts a lot, Twitter is @LordStreetguru just don't ask PC questions there mostly...
 

Spoiler

 

What is your budget/country for your new PC?

 

what monitor resolution/refresh rate?

 

What games or other software do you need to run?

 

 

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35 minutes ago, VIVO-US said:

I also prefer my PC to be as quiet as possible, and have experimented with it a lot over the past 10 years or so.  From what I've found:

 

A good quality air cooler will always be quieter than a water cooler unless you're overclocking to a level where an air cooler can no longer handle it.  Noctua's are some of the best around for CPU cooling, but if your CPU isn't especially hot, you can get something like a cheap Gammaxx tower cooler and swap the cheap fan for a nicer one if needed.

 

For graphics cards, the blower style coolers make more noise than the multi-fan coolers, so I prefer multi-fan types (MSI and EVGA do very well on these).  You do have to make sure the case is a little better ventilated to compensate for the card's lack of exhaust.

 

Just about any case can be a "silent" case depending on the parts you use and how they're installed.  One designed for silence will be quietest of course, but it's possible to work with a cheap one and make it just as or nearly as quiet.

 

If you have a lot of mounts for fans, install a bunch and run them at low RPM.  For my PC, the case was designed for style over silence, but with 4 120mm fans running at 500RPM, it's inaudible unless I put my ear on it (I turn them up to 1,000 when under load, and it's still fairly quiet).  More fans running at low speed are quieter than fewer fans running at high speed.

 

Also, for intake fans, don't install them directly against a mesh or grill.  Try adding spacers to get them at least 3/8" away from the mesh/grill, which will significantly cut down turbulence noise.  When used for intake, honeycomb grills sound oddly similar to a swarm of bees unless you space the fan away from it.  Rubber pins can also help by reducing or eliminating motor and vibration noise through the case.

 

SSDs are of course way quieter than HDDs, but if an HDD is in use, try finding a way to soft mount it.  For instance, get a 2.5" laptop HDD instead of a 3.5", and use soft mounts to mount in in the 3.5" bay.

 

I hope this all helps!

Yes i completely agree with everything that you said. HDD will not be in his build just like one hasn't been in mine in years lol and mainly for noise reasons not even performance haha. You know i tried everything with fans i had a NZXT H440 and i swear it was impossible to keep cool and quiet and the first thing i did was rip out all the stock fans in that case and use my Noctua fans(don't mind the looks much). I guess i did fail to say he has a freenas with 42TB of memory which is enough for now(only using a cheap quad for that too works great). 

 

I personally love my current setup and was gonna do something like it for him but i wasn't sure if be quiet was even better then Fractal design i know metal is better at damping sound then plastic.

 

I already said where i failed in my task in creating the quietest PC possible and would like to succeed this time around as i care more when i build PC's for others then myself. 

 

Do you guys think its possible to just get one hell of a cooler and take the fans off of it or run them at extremely low RPM's like 300RPM-500RPM(MAX)? 

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31 minutes ago, SMBGUY said:

Do you guys think its possible to just get one hell of a cooler and take the fans off of it or run them at extremely low RPM's like 300RPM-500RPM(MAX)? 

It's going to automatically run the fans slow as long as it can.

A fanless cooler still needs airflow, normally it's just going to get it from the case fans.

But in something like the pure base 600 there's not enough air flow to really make it work.

 

The CPU cooler is only going to run as fast as it needs to, and you can control how fast it goes in the motherboard bios

I edit my posts a lot, Twitter is @LordStreetguru just don't ask PC questions there mostly...
 

Spoiler

 

What is your budget/country for your new PC?

 

what monitor resolution/refresh rate?

 

What games or other software do you need to run?

 

 

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