Here is my first attempt at a silent computer with a barely audible gaming mode.
the parts are as follows:
a gigabyte b550 mother board hosting the AMD 5600 g processor. This is the lowest power [65 watt max] processor from the previous generation. It has 6 cores and 12 threads, and games pretty well.
The heat solution for this processor is the Noctua nhp-1, which can accept a fan even though it is engineered to operate pretty well without one. In my opinion, it looks really cool.
The video card was the hard choice, since most of them make a ton of noise. I found out that the rtx 4070 chip from NVidia deploys a physically tiny chip that games a lot with very little power. I ordered it, and sure enough, it is reluctant to turn on it's fans, and quick to shut them down. Even this tiny 2 fan model from PNY can provide high frame rates at twitchy 1080 p games with the fans at 50 % and temperatures around 50C.
The 4070 was a good choice, even though i already own the energy hog rtx 3080. The 3080 card is more of a heater than a computing part. Even though it can drive 4k gaming at medium frame rates, it actually lags behind the 4070 when one games on a fast 1080p monitor. In this photo, the video card is still wearing it's black shroud and it's 2 thin 90mm fans. But, i have removed the shroud, and replaced the fans with 2 more of the Noctua quiet fans. I have used a pci express 4 extension cable, and a nice mount that cradles the video card in various adjustable positions. It is currently above the cpu heatsink, and directly in the path of heat escaping from the processor. But, I hope to position them side by side, and totally separate their two heat plumes.
The power supply so far is the 450 watt Silverstone nightjar fan-less psu. with a 200 watt max video card as the big user of power, and a 65 watt processor as the next biggest, there is no problem with this combination running short of juice.
When playing doom 2016 at 200 fps at ultra settings this computer sounds like a typical computer that is doing nothing. if you shut off the sound, you can just barely tell that the computer is on from the sound. about a second after gaming ceases, all 3 fans slow down and then stop. The 2 fans on the video card will not spin up until gaming starts, even if i am editing a huge photo. The cpu fan will turn slowly during a large copy or render operation, but at the lower rpms, you have to look at the low noise fan to see if it is going.
The mother board has a few yellow LEDs along one edge, and the power switch glows, and these lights are the only way to tell if the computer is on most of the time. One might think that a bit of silence like this is of little value. Certainly not enough value to use a giant heat sink that fits into very few cases. However, the reality is the opposite. one quickly gets used to silent computing, as well as the way that treasured gaming and editing components tend to stay free of dust.
Typing is somehow easy again, when one is using a machine that is quiet between keystrokes. Editing is actually a bit slower than editing with a high end processor and an efficient but loud heat solution. But, one has a different feeling during the process, because the heavy lifting seems to be happening somewhere offstage.
I realize that this is much bigger than a gimmick. There is a more leisurely pace when one is not feeding a hungry fire breathing beast. Rather, one is talking quietly with a friend! This opens the way for very powerful wearable computers, like a full gaming laptop that is no larger than a phone. In the future, we will likely each be the pet of an AI. I am already practicing to be an entertaining and engaging pet for a machine intelligence. You know.... A monkey has to adapt!
And, here is version 2 of the quiet gamer. while playing with the components and the extruded frame, i realized that there was room to stack the cpu and gpu side by side, and staggered in height so that the top of the heatsink of each is level. Now, there is no sharing of heat, and the ultra low noise fans can really do their job silently. there is enough room to use the standard corsair 750 watt small form factor power supply, and an 18T iron wolf pro drive.
The huge drive is super handy, but it is very noisy and slow compared to the two 2T M.2 drives on the mother board. Windows decides when to spin up that drive and make you wait 5 or 10 seconds to continue computing. it could happen during a game or during web browsing. I unplug the power cable to the drive when this is a problem.
The rtx 4070 is working even more silently now that it is not positioned in the heat plume of the huge cpu heatsink. It continues to impress me. Gaming is accomplished with very little noise and heat. after removing the plastic shroud with it's tiny 90 mm fans, I added 2 more of the NF a 12 X 25 fans. I toped them with metal grates, so the cat will be safe from the blades.
