Near silent PC?

[PaulF]

I'm after upgrading the cooling in my pc, it's quick enough and pretty quiet as it is but when capturing video the CPU fan ramps up a bit and the noise, while not excessive, is annoying.

Was thinking of putting a water cooled system in but have zero experience with them in desktops, has anyone used them and could recommend a near as silent one as possible?

The case I have has plenty of space and it'll be cooling an i7 cpu and maybe consider adding the graphics card too, an nvidia.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Ta
Paul.

 

[Brazo]

It’s possible to have a pc that makes no more noise than a stone!

What i7 chip do you have?

I am a silent pc freak. I currently run a be quiet dark rock pro 3 on my cpu with the fan profile set to silent. With a delidded chip the heat is extremely well dissipated, if your really serious this is something to look into.

My gpu is a 1050ti kalm x which had a huge passive heat sink and no fans.

It’s really hard to hear it under load even with your ear next to the case.

 

[stupar]

I'm using a Deepcool Captain 240 AIO water-cooled for my CPU.
The fans are whisper quiet at idle and pretty quiet under moderate load and the temps never peak above 55 degrees C

AIO are pretty good at cooling especially if you are using 240 or 360 rads

 

[GTG]

I had watercooling on a cpu and it sounded like a bloody fish tank lol.

Maybe there are quiet ones but I would ask the freaks over at the overclockers forums because they make systems all the time including their own custom watercooling with copper pipe and all sorts.

 

[Snapsh0t]

You have to look at all the elements involved in cooling the case. When I built my current PC I designed it to use as few fans as possible. There's one in the PSU which is a 'Gold' so as efficient as possible, a 180mm fan at the front of the case, a 120mm fan at the back and that's it. The CPU (i7-3770) is under a Thermaltake Macho cooler which steps back so it's close to the rear fan and I have a passive GPU (initially GTX 750 Ti, now GTX 1050 Ti). It's not silent but it's certainly very quiet as long as I remember to clean the dust filters.....

 

[Brazo]

Water cooling simply isn’t quiet. Under load it can be less loud than air cooled components but don’t forget at idle the pumps and fans will still be running. Pump noise will always be present.

There’s also a passive range of psu’s If ones really keen!

 

[PaulF]

Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated.

It’s possible to have a pc that makes no more noise than a stone!

What i7 chip do you have?

I am a silent pc freak. I currently run a be quiet dark rock pro 3 on my cpu with the fan profile set to silent. With a delidded chip the heat is extremely well dissipated, if your really serious this is something to look into.

The i7 is a 4770k 3.5GHz. That fan is a monster! I have mine in a tower, how heavy is that thing, does it put any stress on the motherboard?

I'm using a Deepcool Captain 240 AIO water-cooled for my CPU.
The fans are whisper quiet at idle and pretty quiet under moderate load and the temps never peak above 55 degrees C

AIO are pretty good at cooling especially if you are using 240 or 360 rads

Pretty quiet, how quiet is that? I'm looking to be as near to silent as possible (within reason, not spending a fortune).

I had watercooling on a cpu and it sounded like a bloody fish tank lol.

Maybe there are quiet ones but I would ask the freaks over at the overclockers forums because they make systems all the time including their own custom watercooling with copper pipe and all sorts.

That might be a good shout, I'd go for a sealed unit I think if I went the water route, some advertise virtually silent motors.

You have to look at all the elements involved in cooling the case. When I built my current PC I designed it to use as few fans as possible. There's one in the PSU which is a 'Gold' so as efficient as possible, a 180mm fan at the front of the case, a 120mm fan at the back and that's it. The CPU (i7-3770) is under a Thermaltake Macho cooler which steps back so it's close to the rear fan and I have a passive GPU (initially GTX 750 Ti, now GTX 1050 Ti). It's not silent but it's certainly very quiet as long as I remember to clean the dust filters.....

You're right, I already have a couple of case fans in a push pull which are the 'be quiet' ones, it's the CPU fan that is the weak link in the noise department.

Water cooling simply isn’t quiet. Under load it can be less loud than air cooled components but don’t forget at idle the pumps and fans will still be running. Pump noise will always be present.

There’s also a passive range of psu’s If ones really keen!

Think I'll need to see a demo of the water cooled systems before investing, no point making it a little quieter at full load if it's generally a little louder most of the time. At the moment it's pretty silent when not being pushed too much, when video encoding though it peaks a bit

 

[stupar]

@PaulF
Here's a sample clip of the sound coming from my PC (not the best qualitybut it will give you a rough idea)
This is is pretty much what it is like at idle and moderate loads.

It's certainly quiet enough that you can here me holding the phone, the kids in the background and the clock ticking

If all 5 fans are spinning at full tilt it can sound like a plane taking off but it is rare for them to do that but then I don't do video editing which is rather CPU intensive.

 

[GTG]

There are also cases, fans and power supplies designed to be very quiet.

And with good motherboards you can set custom fan speed maps so that you have gradual fan speed increases instead of like shop PC`s that have a very crude fan speed map set to slow or flat out only.

 

[Brazo]

@PaulF

It’s not so much the size of the fan but the heat sink. Put both your fists together and that’s about the size! Yes it’s big and heavy but that’s how your get a silent pc by complete overkill heat sink and running the fans ultra slow.

I use an itx mobo so the heat sink sits on top. I guess the dark rock pro 3 is fine on any mobo otherwise they wouldn’t sell it!