The most SILENT CPU case out there!

[Chrislineham]

For a CPU cooler, if you want the most effective cooler which is silent, it's probably this one...
CR-100A IcePipe 100W Fanless CPU Cooler
Problem is, it's absolutely huge and it's quite expensive if I remember correctly... You do get other passive CPU coolers, not too expensive, but only good if you're not overclocking or putting it through top heavy use, and top heavy use could come with music production.
For fans, I could recommend spending at least around £15 on each fan, will get you results. I've got some Noctua's and you hardly notice they're there, Nocta also do CPU coolers, should imagine they're very effective, but a passive cooler could prove best if you want more results.
Next up, PSU, cheap ones are nasty and noisy, the more you spend, the more power you'll be able to distribute across your rig, the more power efficient it'll be, the safer your components will be and the longer you won't need to buy another for.
You can get up to a platinum power rating (infact, I think you can get higher now, but will stick with platinum because I'm not sure).
Anything above silver gets pricey but could be worth it, I have an XFX PSU and that's a very stable PSU, was never really bothered about the sound so much, but it does produce some, it's not silent. You'll need to do quite some research about dead quiet PSU's...
I purchased a passive cooling GPU, it's a Gigabyte something or another, can't remember the model name from the top of my head, it has the ATI / AMD Radeon HD 5750 chipset though. Its cooling is surprisingly effective, however, a good airflow within the case is a must, if you don't have that, passive cooling will be useless (that goes for the CPU cooler too)...
Hard drives can also be quite noisy, clicking away, if you have a slave drive (say for backup and such), you'll certainly know about that when it starts up as you try to access it. You'll know even more when it powers down, especially older hard drives.
So if you can, SSD's are the way forward, if not, just run your OS's and smaller programs on the SSD's and put bigger programs and project files on a seperate HDD. At the moment, I run my OS, Cubase and other smaller programs from my SSD, then all of the big programs and Cubase projects from a WD Velociraptor (great drive by the way).
Next up, CD drive, you can get quiet ones, just have to shop for them, if you have any old CD drive, it will kick and scream, everytime I start up my PC, I usually have a DVD in there and it's just the noisiest thing in there, sounds like your PC has its own little turbine, so I need to invest in a quiet drive, I'd recommend shopping around for one if you need it...
Last thing I can think of... Casing, which I do believe is what you originally asked about, the more you spend on a case, the better built it will be and will provide natural sound proofing because the case will tend to be thicker or of a certain material. However, you will always hear something, I have seen purpose built cases for audio work. I can't give you any names, but they do exist but they can be rather expensive to my understanding. Even if they cost the manufacturer £5 to build, they'll charge you for function and that's that, it's just something you have to accept.
You may even be able to get a rackmounted case, could look dead cool and sit flush with other rack gear you may have.
Sorry I can't be of much help in the case department, I got a Zalman Z11 Plus, it looks nice, really well built and a great price. They supply most of the fans for you infact, but it's noisy and I haven't got the money to replace all of the fans just at the moment.

Quickly overviewing your rig specs though, very, very nice build... However, I think the RAM could be a big overkill, I have 8GB and have no troubles, but then again, you may do a lot more application heavy work to me, so 16GB should be fine. You can always upgrade to 32GB at a later point (although I have heard leaving RAM slots empty can bottleneck performance in some way or another, I've got two empty slots, still no troubles with RAM).
Picked a good CPU, Seasonic is a very good brand, motherboard is excellent, thunderbolt may be a good investment, no one can tell yet, they're coming out with new technology before the previous can actually kick off...
With the GPU, I would consider looking into a passive cooled one, could make a big difference.
If you're running SSD's only, you won't really need any cooling around the HDD bays, the PSU creates a bit of airflow within the case, so I would probably suggest 2 - 3 case fans. One to intake (probably best to locate at the rear of the case), two to push out the air (one on the side and dependent on what case you get, one on the top or elsewhere).
One more thing, you also do get acoustic treatment for your case believe it or not, amazing I know... I think Alienware do some among other companies, I'm sure you could just make it yourself if you had the right material, could be worth looking in to. I doubt it'll make a huge, huge difference, may knock a db or two off though.

Apologies for the essay and unnecessary details, it's my day off of work and I'm bored

Hope this helps!

[BigPelaMangi]

Check my thread here

PM if you have any questions. I just went through all of this myself.

[David Rick]

Why use an external GPU at all? It's just extra heat and noise. Intel's latest internal graphics are just fine for audio use -- you're building a DAW, not a game machine.

I had Chris at ADK build me a pretty similar Ivy Bridge machine (Win 7, though), and we used a fanless PSU and a low profile Noctua CPU cooler. After throttling back the drive bay fan, it's quieter than my line power conditioner!

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

[SabreChris]

Regarding GPUS..

In practice, having external GPUs won't be a problem for a DAW because while you are working on music, the GPUs are not generating any heat; the fans will be virtually silient, especially inside the case you are going to build...

Power supply fans, external vent fans, case noise, and CPU fan are going to be the bigger problems.

Regarding the CPU fan, they can get quite loud. Passive heat sinks are OK, but they vent heat to the chassis, and you will still need case fans that can move the air. Water cooling with a radiator is much better, because the heat goes to the outlet vent. I recommend a Corsair H-series.

Regarding the power supply, I recommend you get a high quality one that is known to be quiet, and buy a cheap mid tower case to go with it.

Regarding the case, you will buy DYNAMAT and plaster the inside of the case with this, and cover any unnecessary vents. Put it on the inside of unused bays, everywhere. Now the case will not vibrate or transfer any noise, but it will be quite heavy. This will be quieter than any manufactured case, short of maybe all wood custom cases.


Get an external fan with a switch adjustable speed ($10 antec) and as large a diameter as possible. This way, when you are gaming, you can crank it up and get the transfer you need. Set it up so it is drawing cool air IN. The air will escape through a back facing vent with the water coolers radiator. When using as DAW, put fan on low speed and it will be virtually silent. I recommend mounting the case fan on the side that will blow air onto the board and components. You can mount a fan wherever you need with some cutting.


1) High quality power supply (quiet) <- This is most important
2) Cheap case with DYNAMAT. It will be a very quiet brick.
3) Water cooling (Corsair H50, etc) for overclocking performance, with radiator over back facing air outlet. Passive coolers require more case fans and make the machine louder.
4) Large diameter case fan w/ speed adjustment, on side of case, facing mobo, draw air IN
5) GPUS are fine because they wont generate heat or make noise during music. You can turn the case fan to low during music work.

This will be a very quiet computer. If you need to hear a pin drop, any residual noise can be attenuated by placing the computer in a secondary enclosure.

BTW, this is how I built my machine. If you are smart about it, you will only need ONE case fan, and you will still get exceptional overclocking performance.

[Kiwi]

I wasted a ton of money on "silent" PC - massive aluminum heatsink fanless case etc, but the disk drives made so much noise it was louder than cheap PCs with fans.

Face it - you need an external machine room. Or a box outside.

Solid state drives, convection cooling and battery power are the answer. Not sure if anyone has the perfect solution yet, but it can't be far away.

[Syncamorea]

Originally Posted by Kiwi

I wasted a ton of money on "silent" PC - massive aluminum heatsink fanless case etc, but the disk drives made so much noise it was louder than cheap PCs with fans.

Does this imply that cheap PCs had quieter HDs than your tricked out PC?

[SabreChris]

Originally Posted by Kiwi

I wasted a ton of money on "silent" PC - massive aluminum heatsink fanless case etc, but the disk drives made so much noise it was louder than cheap PCs with fans.

Face it - you need an external machine room. Or a box outside.

Solid state drives, convection cooling and battery power are the answer. Not sure if anyone has the perfect solution yet, but it can't be far away.

No, this is not true. HDs are rated on noise, you can get almost silent ones.

Check out Samsung Spinpoint drives. You won't hear them inside the case.

[projektk]

any case can be silent just make sure you have a nice heat sink on your CPU with a silent fan and a graphics card that is silent. Every other fan can be adjusted to run at a low speed, just make sure the room is cool. A fanless PSU can help a lot as well. also you can always run a slave machine into another room with better components so that it can't be heard.

Sent from my LG-P925 using Gearslutz App

[M_Teus]

I agree with what has been said above. Check out Seasonics fanles PSUs, great stuff. I've managed to get away with only one fan blowing out air at the back, fanless CPU-cooler too. This one fan runs at 400 rpm. Comp is almost dead silent. Hd is in a cooler/case inside comp. Works great. Obviously a good idea to monitor your temps too.

[knariman]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the replies, opinions noted. You're probably right about the RAM, planning to cut that down. However, yes, it is a DAW but as it's going to double as my home use PC too, I would like it to be gaming capable. The GPU I picked out is supposedly ridiculously silent.

Moving on, I don't plan to have any HDDs in the case at all actually. Plan on getting 2 SSDs as boot drives (128GB each), and have external networked storage in another room. No disc drives. Looking at a Noctua CPU cooler, any suggestions on a powerful yet silent one? As for case fans, i'm thinking 140mm fans should be ideal right? I guess ill have to play around with the fan controller to figure out ideal noise/temperature ratios when I build it. Again, thinking of some Noctua 140mm fans. How about if you have inflow fans on the bottom of the case? Since that noise would be fairly dampened by the carpeting underneath (with enough elevation of course), and then an outflow fan on the top and/or back?

I agree on the insulation and vibration minimisation. A good case build is important though i'd assume, because a cheap case would vibrate more due to flimsier parts?

[javd007]

My mac pro is almost completely silent.

[Osc1lfo]

I heartily recommend silentpcreview.com | Everything about Silent / Quiet Computers for lots of info and reviews.

[stevens119]

I like quiet computers myself. However, it is very hard to get a desktop computer quiet enough for recording or mixing, especially if they are in the same room. If you can't get the computer out of the room for whatever reason, really the best solution is to buy an ISOBox, or build one. That way you can run the computer with the best parts, instead of the quietest...and also experience virtually no noise. Also, you could put all your other gear that has fans in it in there, and have a silent room

[GoldMember]

the cr-100a is impressive but 100w is not enough...

most cpus are over that... even the ultra energy efficient amd opteron interlagos.

Asus claims that WS boards last 5K hours at 105°C, & 500k at 64°C.
watercooling is the answer...

big radiator... koolance 3k cu, 800rpm fans or "golf ball" fans like sharkoon 2k.
antec 120mm tri-cool are nice.


my i7 920 @ 2.67ghz does >88°C / 100% cpu load with stock intel cooler + 120mm 1k rpm fan blowing directly to the cpu, no case.
watercooled & overclocked to 3.6GHz running folding@home smp does 62°C, erm-2k at 9.58vdc, "pump-450 can go up to 24vdc & fans to 12vdc."
at stock speed 2.67ghz does 48-50° @ 100% cpu load.
using IC Diamong 24k, but want to test the Indigo Xtreme.

another good thing about watercooling is that temp. goes down almost instantly when cpu load goes down.
with air takes 4ever, too loooong, lag.

[axeman_uk]

i have one of these
PaQ - Powerful & Quiet PC Cases
and run it with a Zalman RESERATOR1 V2 Fanless Water Cooling System

it is under my desk next to my feet and i cannot hear it ,in my room my pod xt pro is 4 feet away and i can hear the transformer buzz when the room is quiet.

[GoldMember]

Originally Posted by knariman

PSU: Seasonic 660W Modular Power Supply (SS-660KM);

xfx xxx edition 850w is dead silent.

[GoldMember]

Originally Posted by axeman_uk

i have one of these
PaQ - Powerful & Quiet PC Cases
and run it with a Zalman RESERATOR1 V2 Fanless Water Cooling System

it is under my desk next to my feet and i cannot hear it ,in my room my pod xt pro is 4 feet away and i can hear the transformer buzz when the room is quiet.

Mineral Oil aquarium pc case is the next best thing...