CPU
For efficient gaming CPU nothing beats 7800X3D.
Cooling
For a quiet out of the box air cooler, a large Noctua or Scythe will do the job. I would still go with AIO and set the fan/pump speeds to a manual curve. Can't hear the pump of my Arctic 240 aio in any conditions. But fan speed needs to be capped so that they don't jump to 1700rpm on any temperature spike
GPU for that performance has to be a 4080. They are the most efficient and some models additionally benefit from overengineered 4090 grade coolers. Again, depending on model be prepared to use manual fan curve.
passive cooling is a fairy tale.
Slow large fans will easily provide silent and sufficient cooling. Aim to never exceed 600rpm for 140mm and 800rpm for 120mm fans.
PSU Seasonic 80plus platinum
Case is tricky. Mesh for airflow or solid panels for noise blocking?
I went with mesh O11 Air Mini. Occupy all fan positions and slight positive pressure
something like this
My basket at OcUK:
- 1 x Lian Li O11 Air Mini, Midi-Tower, Tempered Glass - White (SKU: CA-79K-LL) = £124.99
- 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £379.99
- 1 x Asus GeForce RTX 4080 TUF OC 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-48L-AS) = £1,349.99
- 1 x NVIDIA - Alan Wake 2 Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-01056) = £0.00
- 1 x Gigabyte B650M Aorus Elite AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BE-GI) = £269.99
- 1 x Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.3c Solid State Drive (SKU: HD-24R-SA) = £159.95
- 1 x Kingston FURY Renegade 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C32 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MY-29N-KS) = £149.99
- 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer II High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 240mm (SKU: HS-07B-AR) = £99.94
- 2 x Arctic P14 PWM PST Black Fan - 140mm (SKU: FG-04K-AR) = £6.95
- 1 x Seasonic Focus PX-750 750W 80+ Platinum Modular Power Supply (SKU: CA-06Q-SS) = £169.99
Total: £2,718.73 (includes delivery: £0.00)
CPU - Cool
Cooling - AIO are too loud, we have tested a bunch of this project from various rigs & every time pump noise is too loud, & 3 Fans at 500RPM is always more than 1 at 500RPM. the idea is to have sub 600RPM Fans 90% of the time (excluding gpu)
GPU: were open any brand/model. 4080 sounds great, but also tempted to lean him towards AMD as he will use Linux Too
Passive cooling: idea is not fully passive, but as close to as possible. ideally 1 intake 1 exhaust (if really necessary) & Maybe 1 on CPU cooler all running around 500-600RPM would be idea goal
case: wise is tough yeh
mesh = more air = low RPM fans
locked off = more fan speed =/ but maybe quieter overall.
i did have a funny out their case idea but i think might be a bit large (https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/MM01/)
to add he doesn't mind running WARM (EG gaming at 78/82C on CPU/GPU) quiet is the main focus
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