Build a silent computer case with your own hands. DIY silent computer

Taking into account the power of our components, we chose the Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless 400 W power supply with very high efficiency. This power supply does not have a fan, and accordingly, it is absolutely silent.

It also lacks various squeaks and crackles, which were often observed in early revisions of Seasonic fanless models.

All the benefits of this silent power supply are written on the box with it, that's what you get when you buy this Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless model with Platinum certification.

Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless Specifications

Main characteristics (written on the back of the packaging box):

  • Ultra-high efficiency, 80 PLUS Platinum certified
  • Seasonic DC connector module with integrated voltage regulator (VRM)
  • DC/DC voltage converter
  • Solid State Aluminum Conducting Polymer Capacitors (Japanese and Taiwan Brand)
  • High Reliability 105C Japanese Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors
  • Accurate voltage stabilization (plus or minus 2%)
  • Active power factor correction (up to 99%)
  • High output power of the +12V bus
  • High current terminals (gold plated)
  • Double-sided PCB mounting
  • Structure ventilation grille honeycomb-shaped for maximum air flow
  • Fully modular cables
  • Multiple GPU support
  • All-in-one cable design
  • Easily detachable connectors
  • Universal AC input (full voltage range)
  • 7 years warranty

Agree, this is pretty good, and at the same time, everything corresponds to reality. The Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless fits perfectly into our configuration of a silent multimedia computer.

Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless Price

How much does Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless cost?? See the cost of the power supply on Yandex.Market.

Those users who long time spend time at the computer and eventually get tired of its hum - noise fans, chatter hard drive noise vibrations along the body, gula video card cooling systems. And the idea comes to mind to provide yourself with a practically or completely silent computer. The search begins for options on how to realize such a desired silent computer.

In search of a silent computer, you can go to the store and buy “SOMETHING” there that you want to sell to the seller, or you can assemble a quiet/silent computer yourself. The latter is preferable. Only by assembling a silent computer yourself or to order can you achieve the optimal combination of performance/price/quiet operation.

Our service center has been assembling custom computers for more than 10 years and, of course, we have an accurate idea of ​​what components and consumables should be used to create a quiet or completely silent computer. To create a quiet computer, you need to wisely select components and just as wisely assemble them together in a suitable case.

At the current time - autumn 2014 - the development of technology has simplified the creation of quiet/silent computers. Components have moved forward and for many manufacturers of video cards, hard drives, and cooling systems, quiet operation has become as important an indicator of product quality as its overall performance. Progress in the field of noise reduction has affected almost all computer components.

Below we will simply list what has changed in various computer components in terms of reducing noise.

1. Processor.

If we consider the improvement of processors from the point of view of reducing the noise level from them, then it will not be possible to do this head-on - after all, the processor itself does not make noise. But there is still a characteristic of the processor that affects the final noise level of the entire system unit - this is its thermal package, thermal dissipation power (TDP). The more powerful the processor, the more heat it dissipates under load. The more power dissipated, the correspondingly higher the requirements for the cooling system.

And the cooling system, other things being equal, works more efficiently when more fan speed, which leads to increased noise from the processor cooling system. Therefore, it turns out that the more the processor heats up, the louder its cooling system will make noise.

Modern processors are being improved, including by reducing their heat generation. This reduction is achieved by reducing the technical process. The leader in this area is traditionally Intel, whose processors in 2014 were produced using a 22 nm process technology. Actually, both Intel and AMD are working on reducing heat generation and power consumption with varying degrees of success. And both companies have achieved lower heat output of their desktop processors. The typical heat dissipation of modern processors does not exceed 100 W even for the most powerful samples. For example:

- thermal package Intel processor Core i7-4790 is 84 W.

— processor thermal package Intel Core The i5-4690K is 88W.

And this despite the fact that both processors also have an integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600 video card.

In general, we mean that a modern, properly selected processor itself does not get very hot and does not require significant powerful noisy cooling.

Although, of course, there are still processors with high TDP (heat dissipation). But these processors are not widely used, are expensive, and are used to solve a narrow range of professional tasks.

For example,

The heat dissipation of the Intel Core i7-5930K processor with 15MB L3 cache is 140 W.

But using such a processor in simple home computer excessive and unjustified. It is suitable for design, modeling and animation systems. And even such a “hot” processor can be cooled with minimal noise.

2. CPU cooling system.

As for cooling systems for ordinary desktop computers, progress came here in the form of heat pipes from cooling systems for laptops. Heat pipes allow you to quickly remove heat at the point of contact between the cooling system and the processor and distribute it over the entire area of ​​the cooling radiator. You can buy a cooling system for a processor based on heat pipes for a price starting from 700 rubles. The upper price limit is about 4,000 rubles.

After the heat pipes have distributed the heat throughout the radiator, it is enough to use a fan with a small number of revolutions per minute in order to cool it.

Among the inexpensive examples of heat pipe cooling systems, you can consider:

— Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO cooler with three heat pipes

— Zalman CNPS10X Optima cooler with four heat pipes

When purchasing a cooling system, it is important to make sure that it is suitable for installation on the purchased motherboard. Those. matches socket motherboard.

Those. in cooling systems An important innovation is the use of heat pipes, distributing heat over the entire radiator area, which makes it possible to use a low-speed, quiet fan, which nevertheless provides sufficient cooling.

Since our fall 2014 builds, we prefer to use Scythe Mugen 4 (SCMG-4000) - a cool cooling system with 6 heat pipes, a large radiator and a 120 mm diameter fan.

3. System unit power supply.

This is the unit that has undergone less significant changes and improvements. If you want to get a completely silent power supply for the system unit, you will have to purchase a very expensive Seasonic (Seasonic 520FL2-80+ Platinum 520W at a price of 7,500 rubles), which can be found on sale and which produces enough power and does not use a fan in its design. But the price of such a power supply will significantly increase the cost of the entire system unit.

Therefore, to assemble quiet system units, it is not necessary to swagger and purchase expensive Seasonic units. You can also use power supplies with a fan, a temperature sensor, and an automatic system that will turn on the fan when a certain temperature inside the power supply is reached and turn it off when the temperature drops.

In our assemblies of quiet system units, we mainly use power supplies manufactured by Corsair. These are reliable, proven blocks. Although, taking into account the rising cost of imported equipment against the backdrop of changes in the dollar exchange rate in budget assemblies of system units, we are forced to switch to FSP power supplies. These blocks have more high rate refusal, but this risk is covered by the duration of the guarantee.

4. Motherboard.

The motherboard is a node that does not add noise to the system unit, because it is not equipped with active cooling and there is nothing to make noise in it.

Although there have been exceptions in the history of motherboards - at one time, ASUS installed a radiator with a fan on the hot north bridge chip of the motherboard. After several years of use, such a fan either simply stopped and the chipset burned out, or it worked and made howling sounds. But this story is in the past and active cooling cannot be found on modern motherboards.

5. Hard drive.

Solid state hard drives (SSDs) have become a breakthrough in the storage of computer information. They have no moving parts and are completely silent. It is SSD drives that we use in our assemblies of quiet, silent computers. In 2014, we personally actively used SDDs manufactured by Samsung in assembling quiet computers. Mostly this hard drive SSD 256GB, 2.5″, SATA III, Samsung 840 PRO Series, MZ-7PD256BW. Cool disc with a modern controller and the latest (for 2014) memory chips.

In the case where the budget or disk capacity requirements do not allow us to use an SSD, we will give preference to a compromise option - we use a hybrid hard drive (SSHD) that combines a small SSD and a regular high-capacity HDD. Due to caching on a low-capacity SSD itself necessary information the number of calls to the mechanical part of the drive is reduced, etc. The noise level is also reduced.

When purchasing SSHD, we give preference to Samsung drives - this

— hard drive SSHD 1TB, SSD 8GB, Seagate Laptop SSHD, ST1000LM014

— hard drive HDD 2TB, SSD 8GB, Seagate Desktop SSHD, ST2000DX001.

Each professional computer builder has their own view and opinion on these drives, but we personally really like them. A 36-month warranty on these drives reinforces your confidence in them.


6. System unit case.

The housing can either become a way to combat noise from the components inside it, or it can itself become a source of additional noise in the room. Vibrations can be a source of noise in the housing. Another source is noise from the fans installed in it. They must be built on high-quality bearings, be low-speed and be able to reduce speed when the temperature drops (PWM). But not all cases (especially budget ones) have high-quality fans installed. If it is not possible to immediately buy a case with high-quality fans, then it is better to take it without any fans at all, and then purchase and install it yourself good quality fans.

When choosing a case, it is not necessary to take a case with 47 (just kidding), with 6-7 fans - they sometimes create interfering air flows intersecting with each other. You can take a case with 2 normal, correctly installed fans and they will provide quiet, good cooling. An example of a case with a small number of fans, but with good cooling is the Thermaltake Overseer RX-I, VN700M1W2N case. If the budget allows and the customer is not embarrassed by aggressive appearance cases, then in our assemblies of quiet computers we often use the Thermaltake Overseer case.

In general, if we talk about cases, the innovations in them are:

- installing the power supply in the lower position

— possibility of laying connecting cables under motherboard and behind the right housing cover

Both of these solutions free up chassis space from unnecessary wires, allowing for increased intensity. air flow in the system unit case.

A good solution from the point of view of ergonomics and quiet operation for the system unit case is the use of slides or rubber gaskets for installing 3.5″ devices. The first option (sleds) is implemented in the Thermaltake Overseer RX-I case, and the second option (rubber pads) is used in the Zalman Z9 U3 case. There are, of course, a lot of other cases that are provided with all the listed means of increasing ergonomics and reducing noise. But we may have favorites in the person of Zalman and Thermaltake in particular.

At the beginning of the description of the cases, we mentioned vibration. Vibration is weak point inexpensive budget thin-walled cases, in which all the component parts are also poorly connected (riveted) to each other. As a result, such cases begin to make noise on their own due to the vibration that is transmitted to the case from the fans installed in it. Don't buy a cheap case if you want to build a quiet system unit.

7. Video card.

A powerful graphics card under load is the hottest element of a modern computer. For example, the GeForce GTX 770 video card consumes 240 W of electricity at peak load. You can imagine the thermal package of such a video card. Therefore, an incorrectly selected video card or their combination (CrossFire or SLI) can significantly increase the noise level of the entire computer.

Reducing the noise level of modern powerful video cards is achieved through the use of heat pipes(like CO for processors), applications large area radiator, 2-3 large diameter low-speed fans. Such solutions are now widespread among manufacturers ASUS and Gigabyte.

Throughout 2014, in our assemblies of productive computers, we gave preference to video cards manufactured by Gigabyte. These guys use the Windforce cooling system, which has performed well in tests and in practice. Other manufacturers use similar combinations of technologies for cooling, but they just call them differently.


GigaByte Windforce video card cooling system - all applied technologies are clearly visible

There is nothing special to say about the remaining components - they are not the key links either for performance or for noise level.

So, what do you need to build a quiet / silent computer?

1. Select components that are not only productive, but also with the lowest possible energy consumption and noise level

2. Combine them in a quality package

Regular readers of 3DNews have probably heard about Russian company"Terkon-KTT". For example, last year we published a report from the ISC 2017 exhibition, at which representatives of the Ekaterinburg company showed a number of devices based on loop heat pipes (LHP), capable of cooling almost any computing system: from tablets and all-in-one computers to aircraft onboard computers and space technology. Naturally, the 3DNews laboratory was interested in the developments of a domestic manufacturer. As a result, a system unit called “Glava” came to us for testing - a computer without fans, the processor cooling of which is based on LHP technology.

Case Calyos NSG S0

This case has two independent cooling circuits based on the phase change effect. Evaporators are designed in such a way that coolant circulation is ensured by capillary effect. They are supplemented with expansion tanks. Using heat pipes, this part of the circuit is connected to the evaporators high pressure for the processor and graphics core. The manufacturer claims that in completely passive mode this system capable of dissipating up to 475 W of thermal energy without problems. The Terkon device, which will be discussed later, works on a similar principle.

The refrigerant in loop heat pipes is in two states: liquid and gaseous. The system operates in a closed evaporation-condensation cycle and uses capillary pressure to pump the coolant. The operating diagram of the CTT is shown in the picture above.

This type of device has a number of advantages compared to conventional heat pipes. Firstly, CHP has a significantly higher heat transfer capacity. Moreover, the efficiency of heat transfer does not depend on orientation in space - that is, it works both in a gravitational field and in weightlessness. Secondly, the technology allows you to create a variety of design solutions, some of which we have already shown. Finally, thirdly, such devices have high reliability and a long service life. Cooling systems based on LHP technology do not require an electrical connection, are not prone to leaks, and in general there is nothing particularly broken in such devices. In fact, this is why loop heat pipes are used in the space industry.

Copper, stainless steel, nickel, titanium and other materials can be used as a capillary structure. But the refrigerant in the Terkon CHP unit can be different. The company has a variety of developments that use water, ammonia, methanol, ethanol, acetone and freons.

Invasion Labs PROJECT MARS: system unit based on Terkon-KTT cooling

Loop heat pipe technology is well suited for cooling computer equipment. Moreover, completely passive CO is capable of working effectively with the most powerful hardware. For example, the Terkon company has successful experience of cooperation with the St. Petersburg assembler Invasion Labs. At the Computex 2018 exhibition, held this summer in Taipei, the PROJECT MARS system unit was presented, which, to be honest, very much resembles the previously mentioned Calyos NSG S0 project. Fully passive system Mars cooling is capable of effectively cooling two GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards and an 18-core central Core processor i9-7980XE. Three evaporators and two massive aluminum radiators are responsible for removing heat from all heating elements of the system unit.

It is clear that we're talking about about simple office systems based on frankly outdated components. Therefore, the “Glava” computer was not particularly interesting to me. In fact, the Thermaltake Core G3 case along with the cooling system can be ordered separately on the Terkon website - at the time of writing, such a tandem cost 11,000 rubles. Based on these components, I decided to assemble a more powerful system. Much more powerful.

When asked why I chose the Thermaltake Core G3 case, I was answered quite expectedly: “ It's compact, has enough space for almost any motherboard, and the case fits the radiator perfectly." Indeed, from the outside it seems as if side wall The Thermaltake model should look like this. However, it came with the computer detailed instructions installing a cooling system, that is, fixing it on the wall of some other case will not pose any special problems. The main thing is that the evaporator and loop heat pipes can easily pass through the window on the barrier wall of the case. Still, several holes will have to be made in the side wall of the other case.

By the way, the manufacturer replaced the legs of the body to make the structure more stable. Indeed, an empty Core G3, on the wall of which the radiator of the cooling system is attached, is unstable - the case strives to fall on its side. At the same time, there are no complaints about the stability of the assembled system unit.

The radiator has relatively small dimensions - 300 × 410 mm. It is made of aluminum, but painted with matte black paint. The radiator has 37 fins, the height of each ridge is 18 mm. According to company representatives, this radiator can remove up to 100 W of heat in passive mode. At the same time, the CHP does not have such restrictions: the tubes can transmit 300 W of energy - the main thing here is to manage to remove heat. Freon is used as a refrigerant, but exactly what it is is a secret.

The evaporator of the cooling system is small - it is made in the form of a copper bar with dimensions of 20 × 35 × 42 mm. This contact area is enough to completely cover chips for Intel LGA1150/1151/1155/1156 platforms. I think there will be no problems with cooling AMD processors Ryzen, although the KTT package included a mounting system exclusively for Intel solutions - this is a slightly modified fastener from Deepcool. Surely a similar clamping system can be made for the AM4/AM3+/FM2/FM1 platforms. But such an evaporator is not suitable for Ryzen Threadripper and Skylake-X processors - its contact area is too small.

A thin steel tube extends from the evaporator on one side, the outer diameter of which is 2 mm. On the other side, a steel cylinder is welded to it; refrigerant accumulates in it.

Thermaltake Core G3 is an unusual case. In particular, the video card is installed in it using a flexible cable upside down. Because of this, it makes no sense to use motherboards of ATX and even mATX form factors in a Core G3-based gaming system - most of the expansion slots will simply be blocked by the graphics adapter. Best choice here are mini-ITX solutions. Maximum height CPU cooler that is compatible with this case should not exceed 110 mm. Core G3 is mainly designed to use a maintenance-free water cooling system. The Thermaltake Core G3 also supports the installation of SFX form factor power supplies only.

For these reasons, I decided to build a test bench based on the motherboard. The evaporator of the Terkon cooling system was installed on a 6-core Core i5-8600K processor. All tests were carried out in this form. It is a pity that the design of the device does not have another evaporator that could be mounted on the GPU - the video card had to be left with “native” cooling.

Taking into account the power of our components, we chose the Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless 400 W power supply with very high efficiency. This power supply does not have a fan, and accordingly, it is absolutely silent.

It also lacks various squeaks and crackles, which were often observed in early revisions of Seasonic fanless models.

All the benefits of this silent power supply are written on the box with it, that's what you get when you buy this Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless model with Platinum certification.

Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless Specifications

Main characteristics (written on the back of the packaging box):

  • Ultra-high efficiency, 80 PLUS Platinum certified
  • Seasonic DC connector module with integrated voltage regulator (VRM)
  • DC/DC voltage converter
  • Solid State Aluminum Conducting Polymer Capacitors (Japanese and Taiwan Brand)
  • High Reliability 105C Japanese Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors
  • Accurate voltage stabilization (plus or minus 2%)
  • Active power factor correction (up to 99%)
  • High output power of the +12V bus
  • High current terminals (gold plated)
  • Double-sided PCB mounting
  • Honeycomb vent structure for maximum air flow
  • Fully modular cables
  • Multiple GPU support
  • All-in-one cable design
  • Easily detachable connectors
  • Universal AC input (full voltage range)
  • 7 years warranty

Agree, this is pretty good, and at the same time, everything corresponds to reality. The Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless fits perfectly into our configuration of a silent multimedia computer.

Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless Price

How much does Seasonic Platinum 400 Fanless cost?? See the cost of the power supply on Yandex.Market.

  • Translation

I've been trying to make my computers quieter for almost three decades. Liquid cooling of my own making, hydrodynamic bearings with magnetic stabilization, acoustic dampers, silicone shock absorbers - I used everything you can imagine. And on last week I finally managed to build a completely silent computer. Without further ado, meet the Streacom DB4. The case measures 26 x 26 x 27 cm without a single fan. It has no moving parts at all. Complete silence, 0 dB.

If you remove the top and four side panels (extruded aluminum, wall thickness 13 mm), you will see a minimal frame and a central mounting plate for a mini-ITX motherboard (I/O ports point down through the bottom of the case).


When I was choosing components, there were only four options for a motherboard of this format:

  • ASUS ROG Strix B350-I Gaming
  • Gigabyte AB350N-Gaming-WiFi ITX
  • MSI B350I Pro AC
  • ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac
The attentive reader will notice that all motherboards are designed for AMD (Socket AM4). All this led to the fact that my previous Intel-based systems became unsafe, and for me this was the last straw - that's it, no more Intel CPUs.

In the end, I settled on the ASRock AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac board.

While the DB4 can theoretically accommodate any mini-ITX motherboard, the case is designed for passive cooling, with heat pipes transferring heat generated by the CPU and GPU to the side panels, where it radiates and is removed by convection. A thorough analysis of the pipe routing paths and the required clearances showed that certain motherboards will not be suitable for this case - components will interfere.

  • For some reason, Gigabyte's ATX power connector is located at the top of the board, and there was no way around this obstacle.
  • Asus has a group of voltage stabilizers into which these tubes would rest. Anyone who understands capacitors and heat will understand that this would be a recipe for disaster.
  • MSI has a huge heatsink for the voltage regulators that would interfere with at least one (possibly two) tubes.
ASRock was the only motherboard that would fit into the DB4 without being interfered with by the optional LH6 Cooling Kit. Perhaps it would be more clear to demonstrate what it looks like after installing the tubes:

To better understand how small the gaps turned out to be, here is a photo from a different angle:


Yes, in some places the gap is literally a fraction of a millimeter

The DB4 comes with equipment that transfers heat from the CPU to one of the side panels - these are four heat pipes and one heat spreader. This configuration supports a 65W CPU. If you add the LH6 Cooling Kit, the CPU can be connected to two side panels with six tubes and three distributors, allowing the CPU to use up to 105W.

In such a passively cooled system, the limiting power of the CPU is its heat dissipation capabilities. For reference:

  • Ryzen 5 2400G 4C8T 3.6GHz - 46-65 W
  • Ryzen 5 1600 6C12T 3.2GHz - 65 W
  • Ryzen 5 1600X 6C12T 3.6GHz - 95 W
  • Ryzen 7 1700 8C16T 3.0GHz - 65 W
  • Ryzen 7 1700X 8C16T 3.4GHz - 95 W
  • Ryzen 7 1800X 8C16T 3.6GHz - 95 W
So the stock DB4 supports up to 2400G/1600/1700 - without any overclocking - and the DB4+LH6 kit will even support 1600X/1700X/1800X - and allow for a little overclocking.

Unlike Intel, whose socket support time is comparable to the time required to unpack the next processor, AMD has a much longer socket support time. AM4 will be supported until 2020. This is where my cunning plan grew - to start in 2018 with a CPU that can easily cool DB4+LH6, which can be overclocked and subjected to stress tests for a couple of years, and then, if the advantages of the upgrade are obvious, add a more efficient CPU when the last processors for AM4 come off the assembly line, on the basis of which it will be possible to exist for another five years.

All this led to the fact that I installed the Ryzen 5 1600 at 65 W. Since I have a B350 motherboard, I can overclock the processor to 1600X/95W without any problems.

If 65W is enough for you and you don't need overclocking, you can skip the LH6 Cooling Kit. The DB4's heat pipes are shorter than those of the LH6 and do not extend beyond the edge of the motherboard - so you won't have any of the limitations mentioned in connection with Gigabyte, Asus and MSI boards.

I've never had any problems with Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM. It was listed in the list of compatible modules for my motherboard, and it was also able to be overclocked to 3200 MHz on the exact same motherboard as mine, so I was confident that I could achieve a good overclock with minimal effort - of course, taking into account " silicon lottery." I wasn't building a computer for gaming and didn't use an APU, so for me greater value had a memory capacity than some exorbitant speeds.

SSD is the only option for a completely silent drive, I got rid of the last one hard drive more than seven years ago, so the system was initially aimed at using SSDs. The only question was which one.

Since there is an M.2 slot on the back of the motherboard, I decided to choose 1TB Samsung 960 Evo NVMe as the main one and 1TB Samsung 860 Evo SATA for backup.

I would have preferred two NVMe drives (to save cables), but the ASRock motherboard only has one M.2 slot. Asus has two of these slots, but it is not compatible with the LH6 Cooling Kit. Well, sometimes you have to make compromises.

For my purposes, high data rates and a life expectancy of at least seven years are required. I need about 600 GB of disk space, so by taking a reserve of several hundred gigs, I can allow the drives to wear out a certain amount and achieve my goal.

Although the system was not designed for gaming, it never hurts to install the best GPU possible that won't melt the temperature tubes. The GPU Cooling Kit allows you to place a GPU up to 75 W, the heat from which will flow through the tubes to one of the walls. This limits your choice to a board no higher than the GTX 1050 Ti if you, like me, prefer Nvidia cards.

I wanted an MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Aero ITX OC 4GB, but my seller ran out of them. Due to the craze with cryptocurrencies, it was not known how soon they would be in stock, so I was satisfied with the second card on the list, ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB:

Both of these cards fit into the case, but the MSI is a few centimeters shorter than the Asus. Of course, none of the dual fans on the GPU would ever fit there.

After removing the fans, heatsink and case, I cleaned the GPU, added fresh paste, and then installed the GPU Cooling Kit:

The last step is to add heatsinks to each of the four VRAM chips:

Testing the consumption of the 1050 Ti cards shows that under load they actually eat up 75 W entirely, so I'm reaching the limits of the GPU Cooling Kit, and no overclocking is expected.

To power all this, I installed a Streacom ZF240 Fanless 240W ZeroFlex PSU:

I examined the consumption of all components and found that all buses, with the exception of the 12 V bus, had quite a large supply. The 12V rail, theoretically, can reach up to 85% of the 168W load if the CPU and GPU are running at 100% at the same time. Usually I prefer to leave a larger headroom, but since the system is not intended for games, and I don’t see any other options in which I would use both processors at the same time, I don’t care too much. If this becomes a problem, I can easily install an SFX PSU and add some headroom.

Over the years, I began to realize the importance of power supply efficiency curves and realized that a system with a large power supply sitting idle is a huge waste of energy. To get the most out of your PSU, its typical usage should be between 25-75%%. The ZF240's efficiency rating is 93%, and I think my component choices will allow it to regularly reach that level - given how I think the computer will be used.

Low power consumption is especially important if you plan to work in places where there is no constant power supply.

Final remarks

The pursuit of silence can cost a pretty penny, and this project was exactly that - it ended up costing almost A$3,000. If the miners had not inflated prices for equipment, it would have been possible to meet 2400 - still a lot, but not so painful. However, it's smaller than the previous three systems I've built, and the new computer is able to do something they couldn't - provide complete silence.

The computer does not make noise when starting up. It does not make noise when turned off. It does not make noise when idle. Doesn't make noise under heavy load. No noise when reading and writing. You can't hear it in a normal room during the day. You can't hear it in a completely quiet house at night. You can't hear it from one meter away. You can't hear it from one centimeter. You just can't hear him. It took 30 years to achieve this effect, but I finally achieved it. The journey is over and that's great.

If you're trying to build a silent—not just quiet, but silent—computer, I highly recommend a passively cooled case, heat pipes, and SSDs. Eliminate all the moving parts (fans and hard drives) and you eliminate the noise - it's not that hard. And it won't necessarily be very expensive (my system requirements weren't average, so don't think that all DB4-based systems are that expensive). You can get silence (and a very decent computer) for half the price listed.

Please note that this is a translation. The link to the original is at the top, under the heading [approx. transl.]