So I buit a silent rig.

[UHF]

Folks,

This isn't what I had originally intended, and I plan to continue working with with it. I'd like to thank SPCR for its words of advice and especially its reviews.

First I had intended to build a custom case, and that has yet to occur. I was hoping for something pretty open air.

Second, this is just the first OS install and operation of the PC. I haven't gone and stress tested it yet, or really done anything too rigorous. It plays Team Fortress 2, which represents about the level of stress I want to achieve. I plan to underclock and undervolt the PC to reduce power consumption as need dictates. (I could use advice here.)

Third, I haven't added a video card yet, but I'm planning to add an ASUS GTX 750 fanless. The Stock processor GPU works, but can't quite cut it for my tastes.
http://www.maximumpc.com/asus-pairs-gef ... oler-2014/

Third, I'm exceedingly happy with how quiet the stock 180mm case fan is. Its quiet, and it works. Why bother doing more work...

System;
Powersupply: Seasonic X-400 Power Supply
http://www.seasonicusa.com/NEW_X-series_Fanless.htm
Case: Silverstone Temjin TJ08 Evolution Micro-ATX Case
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=303
Motherboard: ASUS H97I Plus
https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/H97IPLUS/
Processor: Intel i3-4160
http://ark.intel.com/products/77488/Int ... e-3_60-GHz
CPU Cooler: CR-80eh
http://www.nofancomputer.com/eng/products/CR-80EH.php
SSD: Kingstone SSDNow M.2 SATA III SSD, Type 2280, 240GB
http://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/s
RAM: Corsair - Vengeance LP 16GB DDR3 1600MHz CL10 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 8GB)

The M2 SSD drive reduces wiring and cleans up the potential mess in the case. (Not that I'm a tidy person or anything.)

The Temjin Case works wonders with the power supply. Its able to passively radiate heat without any issues. In fact I would have preferred a cheaper simpler smaller case, but I was very concerned about how well the power supply would get ventilated. This case is about double the volume of what I'd prefer. But for you other folks other there... there's tons of space for bigger cheaper motherboards.

I originally built all this with stock CPU fan, and case fan attached just to make sure I could make it work. I then replaced the stock CPU fan with the NoFan, and whoosh.... silence. The case fan is exceedingly quiet, and I really don't mind leaving it attached. Its also PWM controlled, so not an issue to work with.

With case fan the PC idles at 35C, going up to 40C with heaving internet browsing and use. With playing Team Fortress 2 for hours and hours the CPU temp hits 55C. Again, its dead quiet. With PWM control, the case fan moved up from 300RPM to 550RPM. Fanless, the temps were 39C and 65C.

The CPU is not overclocked, but is running with Intel Speed Step. My preference is to have the PC operate at a lower clock frequency continuously and perhaps maybe allow Intel Speed Step after that.

I also need to add a graphics card. On one hand I expect it to offload some heat from the CPU, but on the other hand, I expect a better graphics card with generate a higher frame rate which will drive CPU heat.

The next thing I plan to do is start some reasonable stress testing and hopefully learn how to underclock undervolt the CPU.

Anyways... thanks to the site operators for all their efforts.

[quest_for_silence]

Congrats for your build, and enjoy it!

[CA_Steve]

Yep, GTX 750 should work fine if TF2 is the most demanding game you play. Here's a 2yr old benchmark from Phoronix where the GTX 650 was tooling along at 108fps for 1080p.

[UHF]

As luck would have it... the card is on sale today, so, off I go.

Can anyone recommend any articles on underclocking and lowering voltages for the CPU?

[UHF]

Wow.. with the video card and fan on, the CPU stays at 40C while gaming. I noticed that the video card got quite hot, 65C or so. So checked the frame rate, and it was 250-300fps. (Its hooked up to an old gaming LCD which was capable of that.) The video card's temp declined really fast when I existed the game.

I clamped the frame rate to 60fps, and the video card's temp peaked at 40C.

[quest_for_silence]

I noticed that the video card got quite hot, 65C or so

65°C is not that hot for a GPU, rather quite good.

[CA_Steve]

I noticed that the video card got quite hot, 65C or so

65°C is not that hot for a GPU, rather quite good.

+1.

Doubtful an LCD can handle 250 fps More likely the GPU is spinning it's internal processing hamster wheel at these rates, while the external buffer is supplying whatever the panel can handle (60, 72, 144hz, etc).

In any case, glad it worked out well.

[UHF]

Actually the LCD is old, but was one of the first gaming screens. It had a 4 or 5 ms refresh rate. So 200 to 250 frames a second should have been doable back then. Current PCs are faster and they probably helps with driver performance.

[Vicotnik]

Response time, refresh rate and frames per second. Different things.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_1.html