Help required for a specifc use case build - pixel pushing, quiet build

[Digital_Dog]

Budget (including currency): £1000 - £1,750 GBP

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

 

So essentially i am looking for a smaller form factor, multi-taksing productivty/media machine that can push a lot of pixels/displays, not make much noise doing it but wont be expected to be powerful enough to game or do editing or 3d work.

 

More specifically; Workload will consist of general productivity & media consumption, nothing more..so multiple browser tabs, 4k 60 video streaming, Teams meetings, medium scale Excel data worksheets, MS Office applications, etc but potentially many of these things at once! No gaming, photo/video editing, no 3D design, no video editing.

• The build must be capable of powering 3 external displays - 2 X 4k & 1x1440p (would be nice to have the headroom for all 3 to be 4k) without using a dock of any kind.

• The displays must run at 60hz minimum, as no gaming will be happening, higher refresh rates than 60hz would be a bonus.

• I would like something as smaller form factor as possible but not at the cost of significant performance or noise profile degredation. Ideally i would like to mount the device to the underside of my desk but comprimises can be made here if needed.

• Essentially i need whatever will be driving this to not be struggling and constantly running loud fans. Noise is very important to me, i need this to be pretty quiet. So something that can have some headroom above the load i have described i assume?

• Windows OS

ASSUMPTIONS (that could easily be wrong):

• A high end ultrabook with the latest intergrated graphics couldn't power this or would at least be struggling and noisy.

• A gaming laptop could power this but the form factor will mean the thermal performance will not be great and it will get loud just from pushing the pixels?? (plus I would be paying for the form factor i don't even need as i wouldnt use it as a laptop.

• A "full on" gaming PC would be overkill and for what i need

No idea how to spec this as im relative noob and not sure how realistic my ask here is but thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

 

[Alvin853]

20 minutes ago, Digital_Dog said:

More specifically; Workload will consist of general productivity & media consumption, nothing more..so multiple browser tabs, 4k 60 video streaming, Teams meetings, medium scale Excel data worksheets, MS Office applications, etc but potentially many of these things at once! No gaming, photo/video editing, no 3D design, no video editing.

None of these require any real power, the only real limit is the amount of 4k outputs a GPU has, otherwise you could do this on 10 year old hardware. This may be the one use case for a card like the GTX 1630, that is terrible at actual GPU performance, but has 3 display outputs and a dedicated video processor for hardware accelerated en-/decoding. Some models seem to have DVI outputs, not sure if those are capable of 4k, so look for one that has all DP/HDMI outputs. And a dual-fan model will probably be less noisy than a single fan one. Or try looking for low profile 1650 or similar, but I don't know how many display outputs those have. 

 

28 minutes ago, Digital_Dog said:

A high end ultrabook with the latest intergrated graphics couldn't power this or would at least be struggling and noisy.

I don't think any laptop has 3 display outputs, so the only way to make your setup work with any laptop would be by using a dock, which you don't want.

 

30 minutes ago, Digital_Dog said:

I would like something as smaller form factor as possible but not at the cost of significant performance or noise profile degredation. Ideally i would like to mount the device to the underside of my desk but comprimises can be made here if needed.

I've seen people run a 12900K and a 3090 in a 10 liter mini-ITX case, so small cases clearly have decent cooling performance these days. Ideally you would want a case big enough to fit an AiO for the CPU cooler, small air coolers are very noisy and large tower coolers usually don't fit in small cases. I would pick a case first, find something that you can put where you want it, then figure out what components go inside. A low power GPU and a 6/8 core CPU combined with an AiO should be very easy to keep cool without making too much noise, especially if you don't put any rendering load on the GPU.

Check out this video, maybe you can get some great ideas:

[KaitouX]

1 hour ago, Digital_Dog said:

ASSUMPTIONS (that could easily be wrong):

• A high end ultrabook with the latest intergrated graphics couldn't power this or would at least be struggling and noisy.

• A gaming laptop could power this but the form factor will mean the thermal performance will not be great and it will get loud just from pushing the pixels?? (plus I would be paying for the form factor i don't even need as i wouldnt use it as a laptop.

• A "full on" gaming PC would be overkill and for what i need

Just having multiple monitors doesn't really increase the power consumption by much, running 3D applications across them does.

I'm pretty sure a high-end ultrabook with a 5800U would already be enough performance wise, another alternative would be those mini PCs also with the 5800U, and you can find some that are fanless, the biggest issue is probably finding one that has 3 display outputs.

As a desktop you could make a small-ish build that could probably work completely passive, something like this:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor  (£339.98 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-P1 Fanless CPU Cooler  (£95.90 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£129.97 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Viper Steel 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£100.36 @ More Computers)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Silverstone FARA H1M MicroATX Mini Tower Case  (£60.46 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair RM550x (2018) 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (£64.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P12 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fan  (£7.61 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £889.25
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-28 02:00 BST+0100

 

The fans would likely be optional, if you want to do something heavier, add a GPU in the future or just have better temps, having at least 1 intake and 1 exhaust fan would help a lot though. The PSU fan should start at ~280W or so as far as I know, so as long you don't add a GPU it would run passively, as the CPU maxes out at 180W with its power limits disabled.

The motherboard has 4 display outputs, which should cover your needs. 32GB of RAM should be more than enough for quite some time, and a decently fast and reliable Gen3 SSD, a Gen4 one could be an option for a likely small performance increase.

There's probably some smaller case that fits that cooler, something like the JONSBO D30 probably would work, but it isn't available in the UK, so maybe look if there's some equivalent or look around for a case that you like, I just recommend that if you're going full passive, try getting one that has a lot holes or just remove the side panel if there's no risk of accidents.

 

[brob]

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700F 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor  (£321.98 @ Aria PC) 
CPU Cooler: EK EK-AIO Basic 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (£95.00 @ Computer Orbit) 
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B660-I GAMING WIFI Mini ITX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£206.07 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory  (£189.98 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (£164.99 @ Ebuyer) 
Video Card: Asus GeForce RTX 3050 8GB 8 GB DUAL OC Video Card  (£319.00 @ Computer Orbit) 
Case: DAN Cases A4-H20 X4 Mini ITX Desktop Case  (£150.00) 
Power Supply: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply  (£118.79 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £1565.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-28 07:15 BST+0100

[Jeppes]

Mac mini m1 and an adapter to get two display-outs from usb-c?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/vGkYmr

Heres something to use as a reference

 

matx is alot more cost effective than itx since itx is just stupid expensive, you can still get a decently small matx case by just fabricating one yourself as not many manufacturers make small matx compatible cases and just focus on the mid or mini towers

 

any cheap gpu like the 1650 or rx 4/570 should be able to do 4k just fine, look for used gpus here as theyre better value and look for dual fans with thicc heatsinks so the fans run quieter

 

You may wanna cut the cpu down to a 5600x if you feel like you wont need 8 cores

 

Basically making it a tad bigger but far more cost effective, save a few hundred £ for a slight size increase

[Digital_Dog]

6 hours ago, Jeppes said:

Mac mini m1 and an adapter to get two display-outs from usb-c?

Sorry, should have secificed Windows OS only

[Digital_Dog]

Thanks everyone for your replies, this is way more helpful than Reddit! Lots of ideas and alternatives here.

 

Am i right in thinking AMD is the trend right now as there is clear choice to make here between AMD and Intel?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

16 minutes ago, Digital_Dog said:

Thanks everyone for your replies, this is way more helpful than Reddit! Lots of ideas and alternatives here.

 

Am i right in thinking AMD is the trend right now as there is clear choice to make here between AMD and Intel?

Depends, amd just has better boards for cheaper prices but intel has igpu (5600 vs 12400)

 

If its 5700x vs 12700 then rip amd cause the 12700 has ecores and not crippled freq like the 12400, though do you need that many cores for just multimedia?

[brob]

11 minutes ago, Digital_Dog said:

Am i right in thinking AMD is the trend right now as there is clear choice to make here between AMD and Intel?

 

AMD was the trend. With the introduction of 12th gen Intel CPU the trend is rapidly moving to Intel. For your needs there is little difference.

[Jeppes]

21 minutes ago, Digital_Dog said:

Sorry, should have secificed Windows OS only

The new Asus pn52 lineup looks promising for that kind of stuff too. 5600/5800H are quite capable for normal non-gaming stuff.

[Digital_Dog]

51 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

The new Asus pn52 lineup looks promising for that kind of stuff too. 5600/5800H are quite capable for normal non-gaming stuff.

These almost look too good to be true for my use case, certainly intriguing, do these things not get loud? Can they really handle 4k 60 video streaming across muliple 4k displays?