Building a Quiet PC

My desktop PC is old and beginning to become unreliable. It's time for a replacement. I started looking around for a high performance desktop PC. I found several offerings, but they were either too large, too noisy, or too expensive. I have found that in manufactured PCs there is a trade-off between cost and noise. If you spend a bundle, you can get a PC that has high performance and is rather quiet as it is water cooled. If you try to save money, the PC is kept cool with a large number of fans. This makes the PC too loud for my taste. So, I started to research building a PC that would be small, powerful and absolutely quiet. I wanted to see if I could build a PC with no fans and to keep the complexity and cost down with no water cooling. It didn't take long for me to find a website called www.quietpcusa.com.

In researching PCs, I found Maingear's F131 to be very attractive. The case is mid-sized and the orientation of the system board unique in that all of the ports are accessible from the top of the PC. However, a build with a 4^th generation Intel i7 would cost close to $3000. In looking on Quiet PCs site, I found a case from NoFan stating, "This unique PC chassis is intended to form the basis of a fanless PC. It is primarily made of aluminium for thermal conductivity, with generous ventilation which promotes natural convection cooling." This case looked identical to Maingear's F131 with additional venting on the side panels. I was unfamiliar with NoFan, but I soon discovered (as their name suggests) that they are a company dedicated to making fanless PCs.

"NOFAN focuses on research and development of new concepts in computer cooling solutions that resolve fan related noise. Our creativity in technology development is supporting the computer hardware industry as one of its guiding lights."

After doing a fair amount of research, I selected a NoFan case, a NoFan CPU cooler, and a NoFan power supply. All of these components, as the name states, have no fans – they all are designed to utilize convection cooling. I was excited about the potential for making a silent PC. But I was concerned that it wouldn't work well. It may be too hot and the power supply too small to support my component selection including a 4^th generation i7 processor. But I also know that nothing is gained by simply repeating what has been done in the past. If needed, I could always add in some sort of additional cooling and put in a more powerful power supply. I also decided to not use a high performance GPU in the initial build in an effort to manage heat and power. I wasn't planning to build a gaming rig - rather a high performance general use PC for an aging power user. I went on to select a mATX mother board, slot loading DVD, and low profile RAM as the NoFan cooler is large and may interfere with taller RAM coolers.

NoFan CS-70 mATX Fanless Computer Case

NoFan P-400A Fanless Silent Power Supply 400W

NoFan CR-95C IcePipe Fanless CPU Cooler

The build wasn't very difficult. I found the case to be very well designed and complete with everything that I needed for the build. There was ample space, plenty of places to run wires and easy access to all areas in the case as 3 sides of it can be removed without any screws. I did have a few questions – how to orient the connections for the power switch and lights, and I was a bit confused about the power connectors. I called Quiet PC and was able to talk to Dave immediately. He was very friendly and helpful. As the case is new, he didn't have all of the answers. But he said that he would do his research and get back to me quickly. He is a man of his word and he bent over backwards to be helpful. In this day and age, I was very happy that I did not have to fill out a web form and wait for a reply.

Below is my build list and the prices that I paid for each component:

Component	Cost
NoFan P-400A Fanless Silent Power Supply 400W	$189.95
NoFan CS-70 mATX Fanless Computer Case	$258.95
NoFan CR-95C IcePipe Fanless CPU Cooler	$99.75
Intel Core i7-4770 Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.4	$294.99
Gigabyte Z87 LGA 1150 2 Way SLI mATX Motherboard (GA-Z87MX-D3H)	$114.99
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz	$154.79
Crucial m4 512GB 2.5-Inch (9.5mm) SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive	$349.99
WD Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch	$90.64
Silverstone 12.7 mm SATA Interface Slot Load 8X CD/DVD RW Drive	$69.60
Total	$1,623.65

The PC is proving to be excellent. It is absolutely quiet. It is odd to hear no noise at all – not a single whirling fan. The PC sits there running with the only indication that it's powered coming from the power lights and the LAN connection. I am shocked by the low heat output from this PC even when running a 4^th generation i7. I almost went with an i5 as I was concerned about heat. The cost between and i5 and i7 is rather small these days, so I decided to take the risk. I'm glad that I did. I took the following thermal readings via my infrared thermometer after using the PC for 1 hour.

Location	Temperature in degrees F
External case temperature	84
Top of the case vent	100
Power supply	98
Top of the heat sink on the cooler	91
Onboard GPU	107
RAM	109