Silent System dilemma

[Christo]

I have been running a 'silent' setup for many years - using a Steacom FC8 Fanless chassis combined with a Sapphire HD 7750.

I however, recently upgraded my monitor from an old Dell 2407 to a 4k Philips Monitor - my old HD7750 just cant cope (as suspected) and the fan is continually running - I miss the old 100% silence so need to upgrade specific parts to achieve this. As far as I see it there are 2 routes to take - 100% Passively cooled case or a larger case with minimal fans, Id also like to be able to do a little gaming but not much so these are my options after much research.

Larger, fan cooled case

• Cooltek UMX1 OR UMX2
• MSI 960 GTX 4Gb
• 400W Passive Seasonic PSU
• NH-U12P OR CR80EH Heatsink (depending on wether or not it can fit my ITX Motherboard) - both passively run

Passively cooled case

• HDPlex H5 Case with GPU silent heatpipe
• MSI 960 GTX 4Gb underclocked OR 950 GTX and wait to upgrade to Nvidia Pascale next year
• 400W Passive Seasonic PSU

Anyone got any advice/thoughts? My issue is that a 950 GTX isnt a huge upgrade over my HD 7750 (given the money I am spending on this upgrade).

 

[sastusbulbas]

Your problem is trying to run a 4k monitor with that set up I would guess, requires more GPU processing and such, hence more heat.

Any more powerfull GPU will run hotter with a 4K monitor, and a passive case with no air flow will exasperate matters, as will a passive 400w PSU in a static air environment.

Gaming will exasperate things even more.

 

[McGraw]

My ITX is pretty quiet when not gaming but it's loud when gaming as I have an aggressive fan profile to cope with the fact it's in a TV cabinet.

If I'm gaming its usually with headphones and if not my mind soon tunes out the fan noise.

When encoding my sp120 quiet gets a little noisier but it doesn't bother me. My PSU is quiet.

Can't you get one of those cards that don't spin the fans below a certain temp?

Cranking the volume or wearing phones might save you some coin?