I wanted a fast desktop machine for general-purpose use, dictation with Dragon, and image processing with Lightroom.
Of course I also wanted a small, nice-looking, and very quiet machine.

For Dragon, it Is desirable to have a core i7 machine with 8 MB of cache, so this is the Intel core i7 - 3770. I am not doing any gaming on this machine.

Here is the completed quiet PC.


A Streacom FC-8 Evo Chassis provides heat pipe cooling in a stylish case. This is a beautiful, and well-designed case.

Asus H77 mini ITXmotherboard, SSD, and Windows 8.

I did have to add washers to the CPU mounting screws.
I also added a small heatsink to pull heat from the Northbridge heatsink and connect it to the external heatsink.

I left off the top mounting plate and crosspiece.

For insurance, a single silent 80 mm Noctua at 800 RPM is directed at the nano power converter. This may be replaced later.

All runs cool.

Pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-ganz/837 ... otostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-ganz/837 ... hotostream

I agree on that case, very nice. Did you use Streacom's Nano150 PSU for the build? I can't quite make it out in the pictures. I'm curious about the efficiency of brick+internal board PSUs, couldn't find anything from googling this specific one, but I know my laptop bricks (Dell and HP) all feel warmer than I'd like.

Edit:
Did you use any thermal paste on the heat pipe ends? If not, time for an experiment?

I'm using the Pico PSU 120 W from Streacom. It runs cool. I'm not using much power with my onchip graphics etc.
I followed the instructions, and only put small amounts of heatsink compound between the heat pipe and the outer heatsink, and on the lower part of the heat pipe to aluminum piece.
My CPU has a 77 W TDP, and I'm also using the onboard graphics. For me, the largest thermal resistance is between the CPU and the aluminum adapter piece that is on top of it (arctic silver here as well).
You can see that I taped the SSD and a very quiet hard drive onto the right wall with double stick tape. I also attached the fan with double stick foam tape and some cable ties.
Without thermal measurements, I was not comfortable running the motherboard totally passive. So I started with a little bit of airflow. The pico PSU is designed to have airflow as well when under full load, and would probably benefit from either a heat pipe or a large heatsink. In this case, or with a smaller CPU load, it might be possible to run the system without any fan at all.
In any case, the current setup is dead quiet, I can't even tell that it is turned on.

Holy smokes! It looks like someone has finally built my dream silent PC. Nice work. So that is an i7 with a passive cooler. Wow.

I would only be using that, with built in video like you, and a 512GB SSD I already have. I also would use a Noctua fan as I like them and they are silent.

2 questions:

1. I am unfamiliar with Pico PSU's. Will they do the job?

2. If the passive cooling did not keep the CPU cool enough for my liking, is their room for maybe a slim Noctua heatsink/fan? It looks like there is.

Congrats on a nice build!

The setup I have now is super silent and wicked powerful, but it is just too big for my liking. And I cannot bring myself to buy a Mac Mini. It seems to not be cool enough for my tastes.