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SFF Gaming system vs. noise

F

FJC

n00b
Joined
Sep 30, 2003
Messages
59
I'm considering going SFF for my next gaming computer build. This is months away yet (maybe Skylake timeframe, not sure), but I'm doing a bit of research.

I'm a fan of quiet systems, however. I'm trying to find out if SFF gaming systems can be built to be relatively quiet, or if they are going to sound like hair dryers under load.

I am considering an NCASE, ASUS Impact mini-ITX board, i7, my current ASUS Strix 970 video card, 8 or 16GB of RAM, and an SSD or two.
 
If you consider the M1, do also consider a full ATX PSU, that will probably save you some headaches. Some would say you'd have to watercool the GPU to make it quiet enough, but I can't really judge that.
 
Wait another year while praying to your deity enough and you might get a Noctua ANC fan. Not completely silent but the demo's they have definitely eliminate higher frequency tones that would annoy most people.

Personally can not stop imagining NF-F12 iPPC 3000 at full tilt with ANC. :D
 
Even the quietest pump is more pump noise than.. having no pump at all. The key is being able to control case fan speeds. Even the crappiest fan will be silent running close to minimum RPM.

The tradeoff for a quieter radiator vs CPU fan or GPU fan is not worth it imo. Being such a small case and potentially closer to you physically, the noise will have more of an impact compared to a larger case that may also have enclosed side panels, and being further away, beside or under a table.

If you have a lot of money, you could go for a fanless/passive PSU, seasonic and silverstone make a few. Strix and MSI gaming 4g are good 970s for noise. Using SSDs mean no vibrations or noise there.

If it's a gaming PC, go for a locked i5 instead when you buy. That's if you want to keep noise to a minimum.

After doing all that, the most noise will come from the CPU and GPU, and that's where more case airflow will help. It shouldn't be a problem though if you have both running on a 'silent' fan curve.
 
yolostrats said:
Even the crappiest fan will be silent running close to minimum RPM.
Click to expand...

Strongly disagree! I have some A.C. Ryan LED fans, they are the pest. Even on the lowest RPM, you can easily hear them, and that PC is sitting under my desk!
 
Things to avoid:
- AIO water coolers
- Gentle Typhoons
- GTX 970

Coil whine, motor whine, pump car-engine noise. It's got it all. Avoid these like the plague. I can't wait to replace these garbage.
 
you'll need to sacrifice on space if you want quiet, there's no way around that. You'll need a tower cooler and an ATX psu (jury still out on SFX-L).

M1 won't work because all powerful ITX cards are going to be loud.

my latest build alllllmost fits into an SG05, is silent for all practical purposes during idle and normal use, and very quiet under gaming/load. I will need to make a custom case though since no one offers one that can handle this combo of parts in such a small space. antec ISK-600 is closest off-the-shelf case that would work, but its a bit larger than it needs to be.

my parts list:

  • -Kingwin/Rosewill/Superflower 500w platinum fanless - good design, no coil noise
  • -Thermalright HR02 with 500rpm fan (800-1000rpm at load with tiny overclock)
  • -MSI 970 w/ semi passive mode. relatively quiet under load too. (and ironically one of the only GPUs i've bought in the last 6 years that has zero coil whine.)

during normal use (web surfing, dev work, etc) there is only 1 fan running in the whole build. inaudible from more than a foot or 2 away. occasionally the GPU fans spin up but i can't even tell without looking from where I sit.

out of town at the moment but can post pics of the setup next week
 
I can say that, with exception to the video card, my setup in an SG05 is very, very quiet. It sits on my desk, next to the monitor, at arm's reach (so 2-3' away depending on where the chair is), and it makes a very low, pleasant breeze of air. It's very quiet:

SG05 w/ Silverstone ST45SF PSU (the one that comes with the case, the 80+ bronze unit)
i7-4790 with Xigmatek Janus heatsink (also have used a Zalman CNPS8900 quiet)
stock silverstone case fan up front

The videocard is the thing that makes noise under load. The SG05 can take up to a 10" video card, and if you want it to be quiet, get one as close to 10" as you can find, with a bigass heatsink and fans on it. I'd tested it with a Galax 970 OC (ITX model, 173mm in length, normal height, not tall like the Asus and Gigabyte ones) and it was quiet at idle, but got itself plenty spun up during games. To its credit those fans spun down quickly after I stopped gaming, and temperatures dropped pretty quickly. Prior to that I'd been running one of EVGA's 560ti cards, that was longer with a big heatsink and a single fan, but it didn't get quite as noisy at load.

If you want it "quiet" during gaming, you'll definitely want to find something with a long heatsink attached, regardless of what GPU you go with. But the card is still going to make noise under load, and it will be the loudest part of your system by far.
 
FJC said:
I'm considering going SFF for my next gaming computer build. This is months away yet
Click to expand...

Come back when you're two weeks from it being on your desk.

deruberhanyok said:
The videocard is the thing that makes noise under load.
Click to expand...

This is what I've found as well. Pretty easy to make a quiet SFF gaming rig under non-gaming conditions. Once a game loads up, graphics card will make noise. If the system is very compact (AKA SG05) then quietest graphics card under load would be a blower style cooler. Otherwise, ones with multiple axial fans can be quiet if it has room to breathe and plenty of case ventilation, which means a bigger system with a higher noise floor.
 
I used a alpenfohn Peter 2 on my 750ti, and run it fanless.
It hits70c playing games, and 85c in the furmark burn in test.

I've got ~20mm underneath, and ~17mm between the cooler and the card.
I ordered a Prolimatech vortex 14 to see if it will fit, and to see what it does to temperatures.

They advertise it working with a 290x (using two 120x25mm fans) on the product page, so I figure it could handle a 970 with two slim 120mm's.
I'm using a Noctua U9B-SE2 with both fans on a ULNA adapter, which renders then inaudible with my eat literally on the case (there I'd a strange click I can hear with my ear on the case though, coming from one of the fans.

Here is my build
Edit:
I'll take a video and try to capture how my build sounds in Monday night .
 
Last edited:
iFreilicht said:
Strongly disagree! I have some A.C. Ryan LED fans, they are the pest. Even on the lowest RPM, you can easily hear them, and that PC is sitting under my desk!
Click to expand...

It's true for most fans. That must be a really crappy fan to be noisy under a table at lowest speed. Or faulty perhaps? Any regular fan i've come across have been pretty quiet at minimum RPMs. I test with the fans on my desk using an external PSU so there's nothing to obscure the noise.

There are of course fans that have very high minimum RPMs (and RPM ranges).
 
yolostrats said:
It's true for most fans. That must be a really crappy fan to be noisy under a table at lowest speed. Or faulty perhaps? Any regular fan i've come across have been pretty quiet at minimum RPMs. I test with the fans on my desk using an external PSU so there's nothing to obscure the noise.

There are of course fans that have very high minimum RPMs (and RPM ranges).
Click to expand...

Well they are designed just for the looks (They have different power inputs for LEDs and the motor) and it seems like they don't really go under 1000RPM even on the lowest of speeds. AC Ryan doesn't even make fans anymore, they apparently switched to multimedia entertainment.
 
Here's that video I promised.
The Click from the PSU isn't that loud, and only happens when you're turning the PC on or off.
Relevant build info from the video description:

This is my Ncase build at startup. The click is the power button/ a relay in the PSU.

i5 3570K @ stock
P8Z77-I Deluxe
EVGA 750ti @
Noctua U9B-SE2, fans on the Ultra Low noise adapter (~600RPM)
Alpenfohn Peter II, no fans.

Cpu idles at ~35C, Load at ~63C
GPU Idles at ~ 33C Load at ~70C

the fans are a fixed speed, so this is how the build sounds at Idle AND at load.
 
seanclayton said:
Things to avoid:
- AIO water coolers
- Gentle Typhoons
- GTX 970

Coil whine, motor whine, pump car-engine noise. It's got it all. Avoid these like the plague. I can't wait to replace these garbage.
Click to expand...

silentpcreview's M1 build used a 970 with an AIO cooler, and said the noise levels were "perfectly acceptable even by our lofty standards".
 
Like a 5.5 tall case about as wide as a Sugo SG1 is ok. a odd drive is a must (slim is ok & atleast 2 USB & audio front panel ports, oh front panel ODD. I so would do my own case, well design it to have a place do it, but that would be $$ I prob. don't have... It sucks being a idea guy with no resources...
 
Thanks everyone, I'll dig through all this info and come back with more questions, I'm sure.
 
Just to add to this. I had a Silverstone RVZ01 system with an i5 3330S, MSI GTX 750 Ti Gaming powered by a Silverstone ST30F PSU.

Now you might find it hard to believe but this system was actually silent. I didn't bother with any case fans as even on low RPM they were still audible but the i5 3330S was cooled with the Thermalright AXP-200 Muscle which I had on around 600 RPM fixed speed and ran up to around 65 C as I preferred silence and running a CPU at 65 C under load isn't an issue as the majority of the time my PC is idle anyway. Although the cooler was louder than the GPU, I could only hear this when I had my ear roughly 15cm away - any further and I could not hear it above the ambient noise.

Now onto the GPU - the Twin Frozr cooler or whatever MSI use on their Gaming series is the quietest GPU cooler I've ever owned but then again the GTX 750 Ti is really low power and the Twin Frozr cooler was overkill and so the fan never span up from whatever the idle value was and idled at around 25 C and went up to around 50 C load which coincidentally is also the coolest running GPU I've ever owned.

Finally, the PSU - I measured that the PC never drew more than 120W at the wall and so I've never heard the fan actually spin up. I'm not sure what temperate or load the fan in the Silverstone ST30F spins up at but for me, the fan never spun once and although I did not have a sensor to monitor the temperature of the PSU, just touching the side of the PSU, it was never hot.

Unfortunately I haven't the chance to own a GTX 970 or see one in person so I'm not sure how quiet those are but it's definitely possible to create a silent or close to silent running PC. With a decent case I'm pretty sure if one had a GTX 970, they could force the fan to never spin up and I doubt it would overheat.
 
Never heard my MSI 970 Gaming 4G. Literally never.

Gaming puts it just over 60C, fans apparently come on after 60C. So I imagine they would be close to minimum RPM until they get over 70C.
 
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