Hi all!

&tldr;? Just skip to the list ^^

My current PC is more than 6 years old now and not as silent as it once was, never mind fast enough for current software and games. Upgrading it doesn't seem wothwile, so I've decided to bite the bullet and build a new one from scratch. Since I've been out of the building game for a while I'm going to need your advice.
I work from home, so this is going to be my work computer as well as my gaming machine. Work is mostly office stuff, web apps, a bit of programming, lots of windows and applications open simultaneously, but nothing that graphics or disk I/O heavy. In that mode, it should be silent, or close to it. I'd also like to be able to do some decent gaming at 2560x1440 and while I'm neither a hardcore gamer nor an FPS junkie it should manage to run current / upcoming titles (say Watch Dogs, Witcher 3) effortlessly. When gaming, quietness is appreciated but not paramount, most games do have sound after all. (I don't use headphones, though.) Thirdly, it needs decent cooling, as ambient temeratures of >35°C are possible during the summer. There'll be no overclocking. Energy efficiency is a definite bonus, Linux compatiblility a must (but will be running Win 7 Pro for now).

Here's what I've come up with so far:

• Intel Core i5/7-4x90, 65 W TDP, exact model depending on price, not sure if I need the i7?
• Asus H97-Pro
• Crucial 16 GB RAM kit (2x8)
• Crucial M550 512 MB
• nVidia GTX 770, 220 W TDP -- how about the Asus GeForce GTX 770 DirectCU II? The 220 W TDP worries me a bit, as I've always tried to stay below 150 W before, but the GTX 760 doesn't seem to be powerful enough for 1440p, never mind future-proof. How is the power management on these, does the fan run while gaming only?
• Antec Solo II -- not exactly a current or cheap model, what else is there? (USB3 on the front panel is a must.)
• Sea Sonic Platinum Fanless 520W -- if that isn't enough power or the regular model is in fact quieter, maybe the 660W? If it's overkill, how about the 480W fanless one?
• Noctua fans -- which ones, how many, at what speed? I've got a few new ones around somewhere ...

How best to cool this? I've had great success with semi-passively cooled 65 W TDP Core 2 Duos in their day, i.e. a Ninja / Ninja Mini (without fan) right in front of the rear case exhaust fan, but I'm not sure if current mainboards get enough cooling that way. If not, then a blow down cooler would seem indicated, but there don't seem to be that many of these. Easy installation would be nice, and enough clearance to be able to get to the RAM slots even when everything is fully assembled. I like Noctua (I'm Austrian) but I also like my wallet, so ...
What about fan control? The PWM-based one on various C2D boards drove me nuts, so I've just been running everything at a constant (low) voltage, but maybe things are better now?

Ok, I think that's everything. Thanks for reading -- any input is appreciated!

P.S.:
A few more thoughts on the case: My current one is the Antec Sonata III, which is ok, size-wise (~41 l), but smaller is better. Thus the Fractal Design Define R4 is rather too large at ~56 l. The Define Mini is on par with the Sonata III and actually a tiny bit smaller than the Solo II, but would require scaling back to µATX. Since there is a µATX version of the motherboard that would not be a problem, but I wonder if it's worth it ...

Set aside games you will find next year (Witcher 3), if you want to max out something like Watch Dogs @2560 you do need at least a GTX 780, but with all the eye candys just a GTX 780Ti start to be usable (and it will use a lot of memory!).
With such a powerhouse (and high ambient temperature) you can't aim to relative quietness, unless you swap the cooler with something really massive like the new Arctic Cooling Accelero Extreme IV (or some liquid-cooler), and even so YMMV.




A 65W TDP isn't mandatory, unless you want to try to run it fanless, albeit that's not recommendable (as you do need good case airflow, which is almost always noisier than a fanned heatsink). Anyway, a good motherboard (like the proposed ASUS) could easily set a negative offset to vcore in order to lower heat (and noise) as well as the S-SKUs.
About i5/i7 whether you have some real task for the extra threads, the i7 may worth. Otherwise, an i5 is plentyful of power.




As said above, you have to better determine your graphics requirement, as a 770 isn't able to max out Watch Dogs at the higher resolution.
Anyway, broadly speaking, MSI Gaming-series and ASUS ROG Strix look like the way to go.




The Solo II isn't that able to handle a 780/780Ti quietly, and it should have some issues even running a 770 cool. Usually you can't have power and quietness, but you definitely have to look elsewhere, in order to accomodate such a powerhouse, more probably that not to something really larger and a lot more expensive, like either a Fortress 2, or a Fortress 4, and eventually a Cosmos II (the freshly released Antec P380 might worth a check, but basically it's untested).




The Platinum fanless series should easily handle a 780ti with a Core i7 (probably about 400-450W at most), but with any PSU take into account some possible whining, while drawing such a massive amperage. The larger and hybrid Platinum/Gold units usually have more aggressive fan controller, so YMMV (you can't run them fanless up to your expected power draw, but you may ask to our co-forumer Abula about his new 860). Another option among quiet but high power fanned units is EVGA, either their G2 or P2 lineups (as good as Seasonic Platinum/X, sometimes even better).




First of all determine the graphics and the relevant enclosure, then you could speak about fans.




You can't love your wallet if you want to max out Watch Dogs (and viceversa), IMVHO.
Broadly speaking, with the needed case airflow to run a hot graphics, you can safely run a tower heatsink, the cheapest being the Scythe Kotetsu (35-40 euros on average): anyway, giving a read to latest SPCR reviews - instead of just asking - isn't a bad idea, is it?
Among top down coolers, your choice is more limited, and whether you will go for an high-end graphics, I see no question to buy a Noctua NH-C14 (it would be the least of your "problems", after purchasing such a videocard and the relevant enclosure: obviously, IMHO).




Things are clearly better, and ASRock, ASUS and Intel usually offer you more (along with, sometimes, MSI), fan-wise.

Hey, thanks for your answer. Looks like we'll have to get the graphics issue out of the way, then. It has to be an nVidia card (ATI/AMD have bit me once too often, also, Linux) and the GTX 770 is as high as I'll go either price- or wattage-wise. If that won't run current and upcoming games properly at 2560x1440 I'd just as soon leave out discrete graphics for now (after all, I've managed to survive on a GTS 8800 for the last couple of years) or postpone the build altogether.
The bigger question is, what does "properly" mean? I can't stomach AA so I always turn that off anyway, whereas texture quality and things like view distance are very important to me. So "maxing out" just for the sake of it really isn't required. Hardly any of the games I play or want to play are "twitch games", while those that are are HL2-based, so no problem there. Judging from benchmarks only, anything up to the infamous "Crysis 3" should be fine, more demanding games might require sacrifices. That is something I can live with, I think.
Correct me if I've overlooked something, please.

Thanks again!

EDIT: I see what you mean about Watch Dogs ... just scratch Watch Dogs, then, I'm not going to sacrifice significant amounts of money or quiet for one game. If that kind of "performance" is a harbinger of things to come, though, that would be a problem, indeed.

Similar comments to Luca's...

Go with i7 if you have specific apps that can make use of hyperthreading. Go with i5 if the most strenuous task is gaming. Go with the 84W CPUs - most games will want the higher base clock speeds and at idle/low loads, the wattage will be similar to the S parts.

Solo 2 is great for lower power graphics cards, not as great for high wattage cards. Check out my signature for a recent gaming build. I like the R4. The Define Mini is also nice.

The current gen of graphics cards are power pigs at 1440p and higher resolution. Next gen (early next year) moves from 28nm to 20nm. That plus new architectures should really bump the fps/watt. If you don't want to throw 200W at the problem, how about getting an efficient card for low end 1080p play now (GTX 750 Ti ~$150) and then replace it next year with the GTX 860/870? eBay the old one.

Power use: Assuming you go with the 84W CPU and a 200W Gfx card, figure ~330W stressed load, ~ 270W gaming load. You can go fanless, depending on the case you choose. There's also some decent silent fanned units that you won't hear over the video card.

Some comments about the build,

As other have posted, check if you program/apps/games will use hyperthreading, else save $100 and go with i5. Would be interesting to see the new asus fanXpert3 if you can show the if the fans are truely PWM headers.

I been a fan of crucial for a long time, tons of memory, and never had issues with them, i own a couple Crucial M4 and they been perfect. But personally i dont like the M550 temps, specially for us that slow down our fans so much. I would suggest to take a look into Samsung 840 Evo or Sandisk Extreme II.

I agree with CA_Steve, i think we are getting closer to the new series, i would invest the least you can atm like GTX750ti or none ti, and wait for the new gen to invest more heavy. Personally i didnt like the GTX770 that much, although a fine card, its a GTX680 with faster vram, still very capable GPU, but i would prefer either to invest on GTX780 or go down to GTX750 and wait for the next gen.

This is a very nice combo for the SOLO II, specially with the open top mounted PSU, but as a warning if your PSU is noisy by any chance, some have experience coil whining or electrical noise with Seasonic, then it would hear much more on this setup because of its open top. That said, i own a X400, X660 and two SS860XP2, the only one that has a little coil is the X400 if you place your ear right next to the PSU, but you cant hear at 1mt even on a very quiet room watching movies. Personally im extremely happy with sesasonic and will still be my first choice on PSU until they disappoint me, but this is more a warning in case you do in fact are unlucky.

Personally i love noctua PWM fans but not out of their tone, but out of the range of control they have, simply the best in the market imo. Now on the tone, i think noctua fans are good as long as you dont spin them very high, where other fans have better tone imo.

First decide on the case, Antec Solo II is a good option, i own one that i use on HTPC, but for high end card i would probably go Fractal Design Define R4 as its more closed with the PSU not up, and the fans are 140s and you can place 7 if you open the modu vents, not that its needed, but its nice to have options.

Now back to the fans chioce.

1) Antec Solo II
Read SPCR Fan Roundup #6: Scythe, Noiseblocker, Antec, Nexus, Thermalright, in this roundup they test a lot of what i would say the best ones in the market, like Noiseblocker M12-S1 or Scythe Gentle Typhoon, they also test Nexus Basic 120 that its a pretty good option in price, and you are lucky as they also test the Antec True Quiet 120, the fan that its included with your SOLO II. Depending on your budget, i would go Noiseblocker M12-S1/2 depending on your cooling needs, Nexus Basic 120 or Scythe Glidestream are good candidates if you dont want to spend that much.

2) Fractal Design Define R4,
Here gets a little simpler, as there are not that many options on the market for 140s. That said, i would recommend you read both SPCR roundups of 140s, is fairly recent and has very good info on them,

First 140 mm Fan Roundup: Noctua, Phanteks, Xigmatek
Second 140 mm Fan Roundup: Antec, bequiet!, Corsair, Scythe

If i was to go with Asus FanXpert motherboard, i would chose Antec True Quiet 140s, imo among the best tonally and has a very good range of operation, drops to 200rpms on FanXpert, and 800rpms is still a very good quiet top speeds, tonally imo is the best 140 i have tested.

Now if you are set on Noctua fans, like me, then i would go full PWM and with a motherboard has more than 1 true PWM fan header confirmed (asus suppose to have changed their only 1 true PWM fan header, but as of now i dont have any experience, so could be a marketing gimik, as they have done in the past). So i would go with a MSI, most of their motherboards have CPU_FAN1 and CPU_FAN2, that are true PWM fan headers, and that you can setup and dynamically control from the bios. Look into MSI H97 GAMING 3 LGA 1150 Intel H97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard. You can check my build on my signature where i mostly used NF-A14 PWM for the R4.

Thank you for making me reconsider the -S part. Since they're priced very similarly (the i5-4690s are exactly the same), I thought, why not? It's a 30 % increase in TDP for 10 % more base clock, turbo clock is identical, after all. But if SPCR's Sandy Bridge comparison is any indication, the -S variants actually use a little more power in total to complete the same tasks. Since they're also a bit slower the only point of a 65 W TDP CPU would be use cases where the additional heat is a problem. And it isn't, is it, even in a µATX case.

Also, an i5 will do, so the i5-4690 it is, then.

They are useful if you don't have the ability or inclination to underclock yourself and/or the price is very good for some reason. The TDP figures are not really that helpful. Creates all kinds of misunderstandings since people tend to take them at face value. They are not an exact specification like clock frequency.

I think you have to read any test bed settings, in order to understand that, but broadly speaking, as said by CA_Steve, it's mostly the 2560 resolution the "problem".



I can't help: gaming-wise probably there's no real future-proof system.

As already adviced, you might rely upon a GTX 750Ti (maybe passively cooled with an S1: a Solo II, with a passive Seasonic or Super Flower - Kingwin/Rosewill in North America-, SSDs and a passive NoFan 95 would be a truly silencer's dream) for about 8-10 months and then operate the main transition to an high end (the GTX 770 heir, I suppose).

I really don't want to run the monitor below native resolution and at 2560x1440 the GTX 750 Ti is going to be a slideshow at best. The general idea is sound, though, I could just stick to the onboard graphics / my venerable GTS 8800 for a while and forgo gaming until there's a decent card in sight. (Not much fun but easier on the budget, for sure.)
That doesn't change the build much, though, it still should be able to cope with a ~€250, ~200W card.


Right, will look at those. Since I don't do any overclocking, undervolting or the like, Crucial's plain RAM has just been perfect for me. It works reliably (and if it doesn't they actually honour the lifetime warranty) and is reasonably cheap. Anyway, what I liked about the M5x0 was primarily the battery backup (caps, actually). I have a UPS, but that doesn't help when a family member presses the off switch ^^.


As I understand it, it's a worst-case-scenario value for heat dissipation (and thus ~power draw), intended for people speccing cooling solutions, i.e. us.
However, my point was that the linked SPCR comparison shows that given the same tasks, the -S versions actually use more power, because the tasks take longer to complete. Their wattage may be a bit lower, but if you calculate mWh for a task that's almost always worse.

OT: Anyway, I blame TV and consoles ^^. Playing at above-average resolution has always been a bit of a problem, but I've run at 1600x1200 ever since 2003 and nothing much has changed since then. (1920x1200 was looking good for a while but then HDTV meant 1920x1080 became the norm, which was actually a step back.) Ten years later, driving 1440p, which isn't even double the pixel count, is supposed to be impossible (or at least prohibitively expensive)? That's a design decision, "nobody needs more than 640K of RAM" all over again. I'm just glad I didn't like the 30"ers I had here for testing ...

Oh yeah - my usual caveat: I'd wait until August to buy a '97 series motherboard. There's always lots of bug fixes and UEFI tweaking in the first few months of release.

Even when you do calculate Wh for a given task the TDP numbers are confusing. They are not worst case for that particular CPU but for a whole range of CPUs. And sometimes CPUs in that range don't belong there really.
Like for example i7-4785T is "35W" while Celeron G1840 "53W" (example from another thread).

It's not for us, but for people with less understanding of CPUs. If someone will put together a few systems in a production environment and want to make sure the cooling and power supply is adequate, then glance at the TDP numbers to be sure. For us, that do this for a hobby, it's better to ignore the TDP crap and look at the real stuff. CPU architecture, number of cores, clock frequency etc. That tells the real story.

That's right, you can't use the TDP numbers for that, but I wasn't suggesting that you should. There were actual measurements in the article, so I used those.

wouldn't that be offset by the savings when doing minimal or no tasks? what are we talking about over a year cost and time wise anyway?
the only real advantage of an s part is its simplicity. I bet thats what the s stands for...

I've spent the last few days reading up on stuff and considering your feedback, resulting in this slightly updated component list (and more questions):

• Intel Core i5-4690
• Asus H97-Pro
• Crucial BLT2C8G3D1608ET3LX0CEU 16 GB RAM kit -- a low-voltage and low-profile CAS 8 version, that's not much more than the regular CAS 9. Comments?
• Crucial M550 512 MB -- I'm inclined to stick with this one vs. a Samsung 840 Evo / Pro because of reliability. The buffer caps aside, I don't trust TLC yet.
• Asus GeForce GTX 770 DirectCU II -- Not too happy about this one, but the 770 GTX seems to be the only game in nVidia town for 2560x1440 gaming for under €300. If and when more powerful Maxwells come out, this will probably either be sold or passed down to another computer.
• Fractal Design Define R4
• Sea Sonic Platinum Fanless 520W -- I'll give it a try, if it whines, it goes back.

Ok, now for cooling. The semi-passive methods of yore seem to be out of favour, and for quite compelling reasons. There don't seem to be any good down-blowers around, so a tower cooler it is. Scythe Kotetsu, Scythe Mugen 4, Noctua NH-U1xS? Is it best to go for the traditional front-to-back airflow or does one do bottom-to-top in the R4? The case will sit on the floor under my desk, btw.

I ended up replacing the cooler of my ASUS GTX 760 DCU with an MK-26 as the noise of the fans was just too much. They spin up to ~3000RPM. The card also whines under load.
The MSI Gamer cards are in the same price range and get a lot of positive remarks around here. Maybe something to consider.

I'm running my system on an 840 EVO for about 6 months now. So nothing can be said about the logevity of TLC, but I did torture it a bit when doing some experiments with OCing and the whole system froze inevitably a number of times. So I had to power it off. Nothing. Did not skip a beat. Still, if I had to build a rig for professional use, I'd go for MLC, too, I guess. Did you have a look at the Crucial MX100 yet? It's brand new, specs are quite impressive and it's best value/€.

Best (non-ECC) DDR3 sticks out there if you ask me.

Front to back airflow with the top sealed will be the quietest and should cool well (see my signature for an R4 build).

Take into consideration the cheaper M500 in the 960Gb flavour (if you game, you may easily run out of storage space).



For that resolution, you should go for a 4Gb card (and MSI Twin Frozr-IV cooler may give you a slight advantage over the ASUS DirectCU-II, noise-wise)




Scythe, Prolimatech and Phanteks offer some valid top down coolers: among the quoted towers, the Kotetsu has the best performance-price ratio, but if you should pick a Noctua U-series, then pick their C14 and you won't regret at all.