Creating a silent gaming Micro PC

[RCoon]

I know plenty of people would ask why, but this is just a project I'm trying to run through at the moment. I already have a high end gaming PC, but i recently took a look at some passively cooled GPU's and it got me thinking.

The aim is to make a pc fully capable of running games at 1080p at fairly high settings with a good stable 30fps, catch is i want it utterly silent with as few fans as possible, or at least with silent fans.

So far parts are as follows:

AMD Bulldozer FX-4 Quad Core 4170 Black Edition 4.20Ghz
£111.95

Sapphire HD 7750 Ultimate 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£101.99

Asus M5A88-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard
£79.99

Thermaltake Armor A30 LAN Gaming Case - Black
£79.99

BeQuiet Pure Power L8 630W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan
£79.99

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM
£57.98


Corsair Vengeance Blue Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
£44.99

Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 High Performance Quiet CPU Cooler (Socket 775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3)
£29.99


Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm 1450 RPM - 3 Pin (to replace fin stack fan)
£13.99


Fractal Design 92mm Silent Cooling Fan (to replace current 90mm fan in case)
£8.99

If you can see any way of making it more silent, improve airflow, or any way to shave off the price, the advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Doomedspeed]

First of buddy, there no chance of fitting that cooler in. The PSU sits above the motherboard (like in my case), so you've got no chance.

Any reason why you've picked bulldozer over the A6's or A8's? Have a look at reviews on the A8-3870k.

If you want it as silent as possible take a lok at this case and it's passive cooling extras. Will need a pico PSU though. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-001-IM&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=2279

Not to mention it's ITX. could be expensive.

As for silent GPU's gainwards 'phantom' series is cool and quiet, fromt he reviews i have read.

 

[Domi]

1st and most important question , does it need to be small ?

Passive without a gaming card is perfectly possible (that is 100% passive no fans at all).
Even a 7750 100% passive is still fine but the case becomes very important.

My own Media / Gaming PC I sit beside the TV and is in a full Antec 900 case.
I have run this case passive now for about 3 years and up until recently that was running a Q6600 processor and a 6670 passive card.

Currently I have an I5 2400 passive cooled with a CR95c copper cooler and a 5850 card fitted with an Arctic accelero passive cooler and SSD. For PSU I would recommend a semi fanless model (seasonic X series).

This runs 100% passive when watching movies playing music etc.

However I also have 2 fans in the case on a fan controller that are enabled when gaming.

I realise what I have costs a good chunk more but it is possible to do what you are after.

 

[RCoon]

Yeah it needs to be small, already running my NZXT 410 Full in a small office, but its beefed out and gets noisy and guzzles electricity to no end. hence why im going small and quiet. like i said, its a project, so im not really confined by much, and id rather go with dedicated gfx than an A6 or A8, im not sure id ever go down that far, and the best possible gaming performance would be kinda nice.

as ive noticed the cpu cooler is somewhat large, so can someone spec me a cooler that would fit?
I'm pretty set on micro atx as a size factor, and where fans are an option provided they are silent, id rather see just how far i can take a fanless pc

 

[mp260767]

would you be averse to the zalman z9 case , comes with 120mm fans and a fan controller.

cpu cooler fan is a 4 pin pwm, mobo allows for the pwm control to be used as well.

1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £99.95
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x Gigabyte HD 6770 PASSIVE 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £43.99
1 x Kingston HyperX RED Limited Edition 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3B1RK2/8GX) £43.99
1 x Alpenföhn Brocken CPU Cooler (Socket 775/1156/1366/754/939/940/AM2/AM2+) £32.99
Total : £578.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 

[RCoon]

would you be averse to the zalman z9 case , comes with 120mm fans and a fan controller.

cpu cooler fan is a 4 pin pwm, mobo allows for the pwm control to be used as well.

1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £99.95
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x Gigabyte HD 6770 PASSIVE 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £43.99
1 x Kingston HyperX RED Limited Edition 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3B1RK2/8GX) £43.99
1 x Alpenföhn Brocken CPU Cooler (Socket 775/1156/1366/754/939/940/AM2/AM2+) £32.99
Total : £578.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).

it's a good option, though id rather use as few fans in general as possible, and most of the fans used id want too replace with utterly silent ones that move a good amount of air instead of using stock fans turned down with pwm. I've had good experiences with cougar and gentle typhoon fans being silent, so id look to replace what i could with those.
and just as a personal preference ill be rolling amd!

is the scythe low profile ultra quiet cpu fan a good option? anybody had positive feedback on that thing? trying to keep the decibels on each fan as low as possible.

I'm also curious as to whether the cooling on that 6770 is superior to the 7750?