The choice of power supply and case fans make a huge improvement in terms of noise as you have shown. Great that the power supply fan only comes on under load. Definitely worth considering when building a new quiet PC.
I usually overbuy on power supplies when I build rigs for myself or others, it helps for both power and noise alike! As for fans, I bought 4 nf-p12 a few years ago and to Noctua's credit they are still going today and in use. Longest lasting fans I have had.
@@fjalls Depends on whether the PSU vents its hot air inside the case or outside. If your PSU blows hot air into the case, then yes, its efficiency may have some very slight effect: A less efficient PSU will generate more heat, causing the rest of the cooling fans (CPU/GPU/Case) to spin more to get rid of the extra heat emitted by the PSU. If your system is cooled well you won't even notice this though. Please don't cheap out on your PSU and case cooling if you want your system to work reliably, i lost so so so many graphics cards because of bad cooling, this was years ago before i knew that this was the issue...
@@vatterger oh yeah thanks. I have a cool setup with good airflow. I just wondered if somehow a PSU could make other comps have less coil whine and such. Ive heard people say that but I cant really get my head around how that would work. My corsair 850w is totally quiet untill above 50% use. Then the rest of the system is louder anyways
@@fjalls Coil whine happens mostly when the frequency at which the current flow through the coils of DC-DC converters is switched at an audible frequency, meaning below 20 kilohertz. This cannot be mitigated by providing cleaner power, as the voltage ripple coming into the DC-DC converter usually isn't the problem, instead its the load pattern or the switching frequency that's at fault in combination with an unpotted coil that can move and thus act like an speaker.
To make things dead silent, I equipped my MSI A320M-A Pro AMD Athlon 3000G With a Thermal Grizzly Arctic passive heat sink with a carbon fabric thermal pad and as a power supply I got the PicoPSU 120W 💪🙏 Undervolted the CPU and things are cool, dead silent and power efficient 💪
Good to see a video that addresses quiet computing. My wife is very sensitive to PC noise , so I had to abandon my plan to use stock CPU and case fans for my recent build. In the end I opted for much the same as you - I went with a Noctua cooler and 2x 14cm and 1x 12cm Noctua case fans, a Corsair RMx power supply, NVMe M2 storage, and a graphics card with a zero idle fan speed (all in a case with good airflow). It's virtually silent when not under heavy load, and pretty quiet even then. Cost a bit more than what I originally planned though, but I'm glad I took the quiet option,
You can make the PC even quieter by using the rubber stubs on the fans to eliminate any vibration noise that may occur and cover the top, bottom front and side panels with sound dampening material which will absorb more of the sound that is still being produced.
@DF, good points. There are 2 approaches to making a quiet PC (at least 2, and they have features in common). One is good noise damping. The other is a case with good airflow, where the fans don't have to work nearly so hard to get the same amount of cooling - which also means less noise. The best approach may depend on how noisy other components are, and the noise profile (coil whine, hard disk noises, etc). It may even be quite subjective. Vibration suppressing rubber joints for the fans (and other moving parts) can help with both approaches. But it's an under-served part of the PC ecosystem, I feel. So kudos to this channel.
Yeah, I love these. I really like how practical your approach is. Most people building PCs on UA-cam are going for these crazy unobtainable high-end machines. It can be cool, but I really appreciate how you have a realistic purpose-built mentality. You let your experience carry the content instead of relying on fancy hardware.
Greetings Chris. This quiet PC project certainly reminds of Linus Torvalds' interview about what his pc looks like. And Linus T. iterated he wants a PC which doesn't make a noise. You've certainly achieved that level of quite; and that too on a PC running windows. Cheers !
Heard a buzzing sound during the night, couldn't work out where it was coming from. Did a bit of sleuthing this morning, found out the sound stopped when tripping the upstairs light circuit. Then realised it was my Pi in the loft which is strapped to a joist. It was its way of telling me the Pi's fans are on their way out!
Yep. And it's important to overspec the PSU a bit for your needs so that it remains quiet at high load. Corsair RMx series fan turns on once you draw at least 40% of their rated power. In this video, it turns on at 220W (40% of a 550W).
I had a friend who actually had a panic attack when they noticed the fan on their RM750i was not spinning; and I did have to spare some effort to calm him down and to convey that it is working fine and that it is temperature-controlled. My main machine uses a SF600 PLATINUM, one of Corsair's physically-smaller models. The ONLY time I could get it to spin, was with the OCCT stressing utility, though it does produce some mildly-noticeable coil whine when the system is idling. Once spinning, it remains so for (timed exactly as) 15 minutes after the heavy load subsides and it then returns back to the stopped state again. Another great video to continue the message that silence is golden. :3
I'm highly impressed by the noise reduction. Wasn't impressed by the original PSU and rather relieved to see you've used one from Corsair - my own favourite brand.
it's been a while since i have watched an episode and straight away you answered a couple of questions about using 2 different size fans, as i only have one 4 pin socket i wondered how to get round it but now i see noctua have thought of this...brilliant, the other question was also nailed due to this episode, i do like the fact that you can remove part of your tower to allow you to fit the fan, nice touch anyway thanks ec for another informative upload.
You paralled my changes over the last few years. Used to have server with big fans and 10K RPM drives. PC as a router. Desktop PC was noisy with fans and drives. Now, server is RPi variant and quiet drives, router is RPi4. PC is SFF HP with one fan that barely runs most of the time and M.2 SSD. So much nicer, used to be like a jet engine running in this room. The other benefit is cooling. In the summer all that heat caused me to need a window A/C and even more noise. I think I went from over 350 watts average to about 40 average. Much less heat. Oh, tried RPi 4 for PC and it just was a bit too slow. But nice for 6W of use.
Chris, loving your videos, please keep it up! I even like your behind the scenes and channel state videos. I see you taught courses and now I'm interested in your and your story and history. Would you consider doing a biographical video, like about what you've taught, what you've seen and how have things changed in education over the years, your experiences in different fields? You're a pretty interesting character!
Love my corsair RM850 have been using it for like 6 years i don't think the fan has ever had to spin up despite my computer probably pulling more than 500W at full tilt.
I have the exact same power supply and it is a great unit. Words can't express how great the modular design is. I'd never used one before because I'd mostly used refurbished office computers with a graphics card added in for some light gaming. Not tearing my hair out(I don't really need help with losing hair these days) whilst dealing with spaghetti junction makes opening my computer much, much more pleasant. The big con I'll give it is that it makes a massive amount of noise when the fans do finally start up. In some cases it even gets louder than my graphics card, and sometimes even something as simple as opening a new tab in a web browser can set it off. Of course, this may be due to my set up, having a "mid-tier"(I consider it high, myself, but a lot of people have unrealistically high standards these days) processor and big graphics card.
@@ExplainingComputers always a highlight of my week watching your channel, high production values and packed full of useful information... please keep it up.
Watching you work on your computer and reminds me of Christmas, seeing how happy you are opening up a new gift. Thank You, for answering my SSD questions. Have an awesome weekend. As Always, Be Smart and Stay Safe.
Not that long ago I was facing a similar issue, when choosing components. I did not dare to go to the semi-passive psu though. Instead I took a one that has fan always spinning, but is supposed to be below 13db at full load, and quieter at normal loads. So far I am happy with that. Actual airflow around hard drives makes more noise than anything else.
The irony of not being able to hear the fan in either pre and post noctua, cuz your main PC is so loud is funny to me. But oh well, I know I can 101% trust noctua now, when I go on and get the latest AMD CPU! :D
Do mind when buying a Noctua cooler for your CPU, the one Chris got here works on all consumer grade CPUs, but this is not always the case. Some Noctua coolers have an AMD and intel version of the cooler. Also look out if you get 12th gen intel cpu the mounting holes have been placed in a new position and not all coolers have the appropriate mounting brackets yet.
Given the low power of the computer, I would just get rid of that exhaust fan. I doubt that it would have any impact on the cooling and it would reduce the noise.
You need to listen to my pc with 200w in iddle and 13 fans (without counting the fan from the PSU and the GPU). A quieter pc is a dream. And the PSU is a Titanium, the fan does not spin in iddle
I bought one of these Corsair power supplies (the RM750x because I needed 750 watts) when I upgraded my PC to a Rizen 5 5600X and an nVidia RTX 3070 Ti. It's more than I needed, technically, but not too much more, and it gives me a bit of future-proofing. Plus it's modular, which I really liked.
I didn't think I'd enjoy these as much as I did. This has been an eyeopener and really rather fun to watch. Getting into the works is so much. I always found the internals the most frustrating part an you made it a joy. Thanks!
Excellent vid. (Not a fan of the new UA-cam layout where I have to scroll down through brag/catch lines and thumbnails just to add a comment. ) Having been a gunner's mate on a riverboat in Vietnam I can't tell a difference between the two machines. I envy those without Tinnitus and high and midrange frequency auditory response. C'est la vie!
Another enlightening video from Chris @ E.C. I seem to have preempted your quiet build, I'm using a Seasonic modular 550w psu the fan has never spun up at all, a Noctua NF-A9 case fan and a passive Nvidia GT1030. All in all a quieter machine than before. I got the (passive) GT1030 graphic card last year after watching your video on that particular model, it's knocked spots off of my old noisy GT 9600 so thank you for that, it's a good job we pay attention. :)
Corsair fan and quiet don't normally go together, Every corsair fan I have used even the so called quiet fans have been loud. All Be-quiet and older Cougar fans lived up to the hype. Cougars orange Vortex hydrophilic fans where amazingly quiet I kept checking they was on. Shame they didn't make UK release I had to import from Germany on both but CCL now stock Cougar parts but they have moved to putting gaming on them and charging to much for cheap parts as Cougar quality has gone down hill I wouldn't advise them now, as they have put RGB on them at the cost of the aerodynamic flow. Be-quiet still great and one of my favourite fan makers. Corsair parts are just so over price current here in UK. Passive cooling is great though so I give the PSU an extra star.
A note about those left over modular power cables. Keep them, by all means, but never try to use them with other manufacturers' power supplies. There is no industry standard for the sockets on modular power supplies and there are even differences between different series from the same manufacturer. For example Corsair's RM (as featured) and AX series have incompatible leads. So if you have more than one PC with modular power supplies keep the spare leads in their bags and label them. Throwing them all together in a box could result in an expensive mistake.
Absolutely great experiment and teaching lesson. I would add one more item - the cost for reducing the noise level - What was the total cost for this project. Thanks again, always great content.
I have really enjoyed this mini series! The difference in noise is quite astonishing. Very much looking forward to your Ubuntu 22.04 review on this test rig and it will be interesting to see if the change in operating system makes any difference to noise levels.
About modular cable psu: It's imperative to not use cables of different psu manufacturer or carefully check the psu pinout because it's not standardized like the ATX and molex connectors expecially the SATA/Molex cable. I know people who fryed some hdds.
Thanks Chris, very impressive. I'm glad to see the whole gang got to be in the video! :-P I have been replacing my power supplies with the 80+Gold's also. I have 2 cases that still have the very loud ones and it is going to be replaced as soon as there is a issue... I have one ready to be installed as soon as there is a failure... LLAP 🖖
I was looking at the little noismaker at the back the whole time you were working on the PSU. All I could think was I hope he does something about that or it would be a real disappointment. Noctua was why I shunned windowed cases. But my next build will use some of their nice Chromax fans and have a window with only the cooler and GPU having leds, eveything else will be black on black. Just because I now can without having brown fans.
What a relief (and joy) to finally see a NORMAL PC on UA-cam.. All those "rocket ships to the moon" builds are so Zen'-depleted :O) Props to Mr. Scissors, s/he's sharp!
It would be much more difficult to attach the cables to the power supply when it is inside the PC case. The old power supply already had the cables coming out of a hole on the back of the supply! Much easier to do it like Chris did!
Another liquid cooled design feature : It puts the CPU heat outside along with the other heat inside the case. One drawback though, motherboard chip sets with heat sinks that rely on airflow from the CPU fan may require fan's of their own now. Use curved leading edge bladed fans like Christopher is doing here and those will be quiet to
I've tried to build a super quiet pc as well, but also ended up removing any hdd because they would sometime resonate in the case. Also downside a of quiet pc's: coil whine coming from the psu, motherboard or gpu becomes much more noticable if one of them suffers from it.
Back in 2016 december pre-ordered my Seasonic Prime 850w 80+ Titanium power supply, it was delivered from first batch to me on 2017 January - going strong since then... back in 2017 bought 4 x Noctua NF-A14 fans which I use to this day, along with 3 x NF-A12x25 fans on 360mm Artic Liquid Freezer II all in one liquid cooler. You can easily sleep in same room when computer is doing video encoding 80-100% load on Ryzen 9 5950x.
@ExplainingComputers When you get a GPU, do yourself the favor of buying something like a GTX 1050 or GTX 1650. They both are still very power efficient and quiet, but are leaps and bounds better than a 1030 in the area of performance, especially for anything where CUDA will be utilized.
Thanks for this. A 1050 or 1650 would indeed be more powerful, but would destroy the whole purpose of this PC. It has to be quiet as in recording room quiet, and I know from experience that a 1050+ is not. :)
Impressive improvement in extending the life of your i5. I, myself, favour Cryorig's silent series fans. I find they're adequately quiet in one of my rigs.
It must be quiet, because even when wearing headphones I can only hear my PC's fans when you play the clip of the quiet PC's audio! I have the same passive GT 1030 in my PC as it is a Ryzen rig, and it works well for everything I need and even some very light gaming.
Very informative video as always Chris but one thing has me puzzled. Why the rear case fan? With the tower cooler on the cpu pulling air from the front and exhausting it out the back a rear case fan seems to be overkill. I would have thought that a rear fan would only be needed if the cpu cooler was sitting flat blasting hot air into the bottom of the power supply. Additionally under load the cpu fan may spin quite a bit faster than the rear case fan causing an imbalance in the airflow. My Haswell i7 system has one fan at the front with a tower cooler on the cpu and no rear case fan. Been like that for years with no heat problems and little to no noise from the two fans. Under load I can feel warm air being pushed out of the rear of the case and that comes from the cpu cooler alone. It would be interesting to me and perhaps others if you were to revisit this in the future and take sound and temp readings with the rear case fan removed. I suspect there would be no difference and if that were the case then you would now have one spare case fan for your next project!
This may well be true. I decided to use the front and rear fans, and as large as possible, to move the required airflow with the minimal fan rotation. But one may well have been enough as you say.
Great vid. As a PC enthusiast myself, fan noise has always been a thorn in my side. Nice that manufactures are providing near silent solutions for powerful PC's these days.
Your upgrade and tests make sense as Britain is raising its energy prices. Having new fans and energy-efficient PSUs is indeed quite crucial for reducing noise pollution, excessive energy consumption as well as cooler temperatures to keep the motherboard and hard drives safe as they don't like heat that would brick the HDDs and maybe melt the soldering or worse pop several of those capacitors etc
Those silicon mounts are a great addition, they reduce the case resonance quite a bit on a computer that runs hot but at those low low fan speeds that shouldn't make much of a difference.
This edition inspired a question. Are there standard dimensions for power supplies, or do you have to check very carefully that a proposed replacement will actually fit in the available space, and have conveniently placed mountings? Velcro cable ties as used here are probably perfectly fine for a stationary application like a desktop, but if a more robust grip is required, there are re-usable variants of the otherwise single-use zip tie. (Invented for possibly transient mountings in racing car, light aircraft, &c.) Just a thought inspired by shovelling crud out ot desktop machines; put a light filter material (A/C, vacuum cleaner, or similar) on the outside (sucking side) of the front fan, to trap any dust that might otherwise get in and settle on the board. The fan might have to work a little harder, but it'll kep the interior cleaner. A regularly modified project like this machine might not be unopened long enough to accrete a significant layer of dust, in which case the effort wouldn't be justified.
atx in height and width is standard, the depth can be different, from like 120 mm to up to like 200mm on the 1500watts units and 2000watts ones, but those will go in enormous cases where space is not a real problem, under 750watts most psus are like this, around 130 to 140mm
Good choice. It's a Corsair RM750 I have in my system. I bought it last year, before a major system upgrade, which meant I was future proofed! Handles my current system without any issue at all. (AMD Ryzen 5 3700x, 32gb ram, Nvidia GTX 1660 GPU and 3 HHds and 1 NVME ssd.
I was surprised that there was no additional gasket between the power supply and the metal PC case to reduce vibration noise. Is the power supply itself plastic?
Certainly seems so. That old case really sticks out now, since it doesn't have a motherboard tray. Meaning, Chris had to just shove those PSU cables in with everything else.
Very interesting as usual. @ 15:10 I find the holes in the grid are too small. In this case, I prefer to jigsaw a hole and add a wire grid behind the fan. ** Très intéressant comme d'habitude. @ 15:10 je trouve que les trous de la grille sont trop petits. Dans ce cas, je préfère découper à la scie sauteuse un trou et ajouter une grille en fils derrière le ventilateur.
I think your setup is quite balanced because 100% passive cooling on anything above a 4th gen i3 is not practical. Mid to high-end CPUs and reasonably powerful graphics cards require some sort of fan coolers. How about different types of water coolers? Water coolers are not cheap or simple by design and the PCs with that type of a cooler aren't very good for portability. Your setup is fairly balanced. 👍👍
Regarding expensive: a night at the cinema will set you back (depending on country) 15 USD for the ticket, 15 USD for pop corn, drinks, snacks, and 3-5 for travel. You are entertained for 2 hours and will then forget the plot of the movie a week after (unless it is an exceptionally good one). The same 35 USD gets you almost two Noctua which will provide you joy every day you use the PC :)
I am amazed the ATX (and family) cases and their hulking-great power supplies are still a thing. In the age of tablets, phones, SBCs they really are hampered by some old technology standards. There are some great tiny form factor pcs around that don't have these old things, some of which have the volume of an ATX power supply! I suppose if you must have a big graphics card and other things, there is no choice. Apple often lead the way, as they design their own hardware.
Superb video as always Chris. Think I might do the same upgrades to my PC. It's not noisy by any stretch, but who doesn't like a little less noise ... and an excuse to upgrade 👍
I only discovered your channel about a week ago and have been bingeing through the last 10 years. Great stuff Regarding the silent PC upgrade. To be fair the lightweight generic case you used didn't really help you very much. For the last 10 years or so , (and several build/upgrades), I have use a Fractal Design 3 case. Very solid with good airflow, dust filtering and sound deadening materials applied to the sides and probably the top of the case. My current build, dating from late 2017, is a Ryzen 5 1600 processor with an 8GB R570 gpu plus various SSD's and HDD's. I have two front case fans and one rear fan which I think were supplied with the case. My PSU is a Corsair, (can't remember which model but around 600W), and I always fit my PSU's to draw air from inside the case - reduces dust intrusion and supplements the rear case fan. Temps and noise are quite acceptable. For the next upgrade I'll definitely be looking at some of those larger and slower revolving Corsair fans. I think that the Fractal Design case will last me a few years yet as my under the desk machine.
@@ExplainingComputers Indeed the day after it was £37.99! Worse thing I bought an indestructible Shaver for £96 as amazon was more expensive. My bro text I fancy one got it for him the next day half price at £39.99. It is a Remington USB rechargeable shaver and yellow. Trust me it is SUPERB!!
The choice of power supply and case fans make a huge improvement in terms of noise as you have shown. Great that the power supply fan only comes on under load. Definitely worth considering when building a new quiet PC.
I usually overbuy on power supplies when I build rigs for myself or others, it helps for both power and noise alike!
As for fans, I bought 4 nf-p12 a few years ago and to Noctua's credit they are still going today and in use. Longest lasting fans I have had.
Can a quality PSU make other comps quieter?
@@fjalls Depends on whether the PSU vents its hot air inside the case or outside. If your PSU blows hot air into the case, then yes, its efficiency may have some very slight effect: A less efficient PSU will generate more heat, causing the rest of the cooling fans (CPU/GPU/Case) to spin more to get rid of the extra heat emitted by the PSU. If your system is cooled well you won't even notice this though. Please don't cheap out on your PSU and case cooling if you want your system to work reliably, i lost so so so many graphics cards because of bad cooling, this was years ago before i knew that this was the issue...
@@vatterger oh yeah thanks. I have a cool setup with good airflow. I just wondered if somehow a PSU could make other comps have less coil whine and such. Ive heard people say that but I cant really get my head around how that would work.
My corsair 850w is totally quiet untill above 50% use. Then the rest of the system is louder anyways
@@fjalls Coil whine happens mostly when the frequency at which the current flow through the coils of DC-DC converters is switched at an audible frequency, meaning below 20 kilohertz. This cannot be mitigated by providing cleaner power, as the voltage ripple coming into the DC-DC converter usually isn't the problem, instead its the load pattern or the switching frequency that's at fault in combination with an unpotted coil that can move and thus act like an speaker.
@@vatterger Thats what I thought. I can almost make my GPU sing by altering the "max fps" ingame
To make things dead silent, I equipped my
MSI A320M-A Pro
AMD Athlon 3000G
With a Thermal Grizzly Arctic passive heat sink with a carbon fabric thermal pad and as a power supply I got the PicoPSU 120W 💪🙏
Undervolted the CPU and things are cool, dead silent and power efficient 💪
Good to see a video that addresses quiet computing. My wife is very sensitive to PC noise , so I had to abandon my plan to use stock CPU and case fans for my recent build. In the end I opted for much the same as you - I went with a Noctua cooler and 2x 14cm and 1x 12cm Noctua case fans, a Corsair RMx power supply, NVMe M2 storage, and a graphics card with a zero idle fan speed (all in a case with good airflow). It's virtually silent when not under heavy load, and pretty quiet even then. Cost a bit more than what I originally planned though, but I'm glad I took the quiet option,
You can make the PC even quieter by using the rubber stubs on the fans to eliminate any vibration noise that may occur and cover the top, bottom front and side panels with sound dampening material which will absorb more of the sound that is still being produced.
@DF, good points. There are 2 approaches to making a quiet PC (at least 2, and they have features in common). One is good noise damping. The other is a case with good airflow, where the fans don't have to work nearly so hard to get the same amount of cooling - which also means less noise.
The best approach may depend on how noisy other components are, and the noise profile (coil whine, hard disk noises, etc). It may even be quite subjective. Vibration suppressing rubber joints for the fans (and other moving parts) can help with both approaches.
But it's an under-served part of the PC ecosystem, I feel. So kudos to this channel.
Simple yet informative. Don't cheap out on power supplies and get decent case fans... sounds like wise advice. Thanks for the video, Chris.
Yeah, I love these. I really like how practical your approach is. Most people building PCs on UA-cam are going for these crazy unobtainable high-end machines. It can be cool, but I really appreciate how you have a realistic purpose-built mentality. You let your experience carry the content instead of relying on fancy hardware.
Corsair RMx and Noctua fans and cooler are what I ran in my system. Very quiet even when gaming, I love this setup.
Greetings Chris.
This quiet PC project certainly reminds of Linus Torvalds' interview about what his pc looks like. And Linus T. iterated he wants a PC which doesn't make a noise.
You've certainly achieved that level of quite; and that too on a PC running windows. Cheers !
I saw them do the Linus Torvald build on another channel. It was blacked out and very quiet. I loved it. LOL
Heard a buzzing sound during the night, couldn't work out where it was coming from. Did a bit of sleuthing this morning, found out the sound stopped when tripping the upstairs light circuit. Then realised it was my Pi in the loft which is strapped to a joist. It was its way of telling me the Pi's fans are on their way out!
Does Noctua make a fan for the Pi? There enough Pi's around to justify it.
I love the 0 rpm PSUs for dust reasons. There's never any in there. Quiet is definitely a sweet bonus.
Yep. And it's important to overspec the PSU a bit for your needs so that it remains quiet at high load. Corsair RMx series fan turns on once you draw at least 40% of their rated power. In this video, it turns on at 220W (40% of a 550W).
I had a friend who actually had a panic attack when they noticed the fan on their RM750i was not spinning; and I did have to spare some effort to calm him down and to convey that it is working fine and that it is temperature-controlled.
My main machine uses a SF600 PLATINUM, one of Corsair's physically-smaller models. The ONLY time I could get it to spin, was with the OCCT stressing utility, though it does produce some mildly-noticeable coil whine when the system is idling. Once spinning, it remains so for (timed exactly as) 15 minutes after the heavy load subsides and it then returns back to the stopped state again.
Another great video to continue the message that silence is golden. :3
Only OGs use Corsair. Professor Barnatt's a real one. Great video as always!
I'm highly impressed by the noise reduction. Wasn't impressed by the original PSU and rather relieved to see you've used one from Corsair - my own favourite brand.
Excellent video, as always. That PC is certainly as quiet as you would ever need.
Very significant difference. Thanks!
I love it when a plan comes together, quietly.
"Much Ado About... Something (quieter !) " Thank you for a brilliant demonstration!
it's been a while since i have watched an episode and straight away you answered a couple of questions about using 2 different size fans, as i only have one 4 pin socket i wondered how to get round it but now i see noctua have thought of this...brilliant, the other question was also nailed due to this episode, i do like the fact that you can remove part of your tower to allow you to fit the fan, nice touch
anyway thanks ec for another informative upload.
You paralled my changes over the last few years.
Used to have server with big fans and 10K RPM drives. PC as a router.
Desktop PC was noisy with fans and drives.
Now, server is RPi variant and quiet drives, router is RPi4.
PC is SFF HP with one fan that barely runs most of the time and M.2 SSD.
So much nicer, used to be like a jet engine running in this room.
The other benefit is cooling. In the summer all that heat caused me to need a window A/C and even more noise. I think I went from over 350 watts average to about 40 average. Much less heat.
Oh, tried RPi 4 for PC and it just was a bit too slow. But nice for 6W of use.
Chris, loving your videos, please keep it up! I even like your behind the scenes and channel state videos. I see you taught courses and now I'm interested in your and your story and history. Would you consider doing a biographical video, like about what you've taught, what you've seen and how have things changed in education over the years, your experiences in different fields? You're a pretty interesting character!
Interesting video idea -- noted. :)
Love my corsair RM850 have been using it for like 6 years i don't think the fan has ever had to spin up despite my computer probably pulling more than 500W at full tilt.
I had no idea that there existed PSU for 0 rpm mode, this is really helpful to know
I have the exact same power supply and it is a great unit. Words can't express how great the modular design is. I'd never used one before because I'd mostly used refurbished office computers with a graphics card added in for some light gaming. Not tearing my hair out(I don't really need help with losing hair these days) whilst dealing with spaghetti junction makes opening my computer much, much more pleasant.
The big con I'll give it is that it makes a massive amount of noise when the fans do finally start up. In some cases it even gets louder than my graphics card, and sometimes even something as simple as opening a new tab in a web browser can set it off. Of course, this may be due to my set up, having a "mid-tier"(I consider it high, myself, but a lot of people have unrealistically high standards these days) processor and big graphics card.
Thanks
Most appreciated, thanks. :)
@@ExplainingComputers always a highlight of my week watching your channel, high production values and packed full of useful information... please keep it up.
Entertaining and calm. Gotta love this channel. Saludos desde Paraguay.
Watching you work on your computer and reminds me of Christmas, seeing how happy you are opening up a new gift. Thank You, for answering my SSD questions. Have an awesome weekend. As Always, Be Smart and Stay Safe.
Not that long ago I was facing a similar issue, when choosing components. I did not dare to go to the semi-passive psu though. Instead I took a one that has fan always spinning, but is supposed to be below 13db at full load, and quieter at normal loads. So far I am happy with that. Actual airflow around hard drives makes more noise than anything else.
Really quiet less than 30db. Well it come at a cost. Great show.
The irony of not being able to hear the fan in either pre and post noctua, cuz your main PC is so loud is funny to me. But oh well, I know I can 101% trust noctua now, when I go on and get the latest AMD CPU! :D
Do mind when buying a Noctua cooler for your CPU, the one Chris got here works on all consumer grade CPUs, but this is not always the case. Some Noctua coolers have an AMD and intel version of the cooler. Also look out if you get 12th gen intel cpu the mounting holes have been placed in a new position and not all coolers have the appropriate mounting brackets yet.
Thanks!
Thanks James, most appreciated. :)
Amazing work as usual, I have really enjoyed the whole process from start to finish. You helped to simplify the steps.
Given the low power of the computer, I would just get rid of that exhaust fan. I doubt that it would have any impact on the cooling and it would reduce the noise.
You need to listen to my pc with 200w in iddle and 13 fans (without counting the fan from the PSU and the GPU). A quieter pc is a dream.
And the PSU is a Titanium, the fan does not spin in iddle
I bought one of these Corsair power supplies (the RM750x because I needed 750 watts) when I upgraded my PC to a Rizen 5 5600X and an nVidia RTX 3070 Ti. It's more than I needed, technically, but not too much more, and it gives me a bit of future-proofing. Plus it's modular, which I really liked.
Finally that PSU gets out. It has 8cm rear fan and those are known to be noisy.
"THERE WE ARE" always good to see a new video from you... Keep up the good work... 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Thanks that’s a super quiet pc. Now I’m off to the shop to assemble my newly arrived laser. Cheers
Now that sounds like fun!
Well done as usual Chris. I really enjoy the Desktop PC builds. This one turned out very well indeed. Take care. Cheers
Fantastic results. Have to keep this in mind.
I didn't think I'd enjoy these as much as I did. This has been an eyeopener and really rather fun to watch. Getting into the works is so much. I always found the internals the most frustrating part an you made it a joy. Thanks!
I Noctua all my systems. Stunning fans.
Whilst the hardware was good, I'm impressed such an old case is still relevant. Don't forget an RGB fan on the side vent. This will improve its speed.
Excellent vid. (Not a fan of the new UA-cam layout where I have to scroll down through brag/catch lines and thumbnails just to add a comment. ) Having been a gunner's mate on a riverboat in Vietnam I can't tell a difference between the two machines. I envy those without Tinnitus and high and midrange frequency auditory response. C'est la vie!
I totally agree on the new UA-cam layout on desktop -- not a step forward . . .
Noctua fans are like miracle. Thank you for another great video!
Another enlightening video from Chris @ E.C. I seem to have preempted your quiet build, I'm using a Seasonic modular 550w psu the fan has never spun up at all, a Noctua NF-A9 case fan and a passive Nvidia GT1030. All in all a quieter machine than before. I got the (passive) GT1030 graphic card last year after watching your video on that particular model, it's knocked spots off of my old noisy GT 9600 so thank you for that, it's a good job we pay attention. :)
Nice, this video will be going to my "computer building idea" playlist.
What impressed me most is the idle power usage of your i5 im sure the older Haswell generation of motherboards were idling around 50 watts
Corsair fan and quiet don't normally go together, Every corsair fan I have used even the so called quiet fans have been loud. All Be-quiet and older Cougar fans lived up to the hype. Cougars orange Vortex hydrophilic fans where amazingly quiet I kept checking they was on. Shame they didn't make UK release I had to import from Germany on both but CCL now stock Cougar parts but they have moved to putting gaming on them and charging to much for cheap parts as Cougar quality has gone down hill I wouldn't advise them now, as they have put RGB on them at the cost of the aerodynamic flow. Be-quiet still great and one of my favourite fan makers. Corsair parts are just so over price current here in UK. Passive cooling is great though so I give the PSU an extra star.
Yet another flawless video, Sir Chris. Thank you and Easter blessings from Thailand.
Greetings Don. I hope that all is well with you. :)
A note about those left over modular power cables. Keep them, by all means, but never try to use them with other manufacturers' power supplies. There is no industry standard for the sockets on modular power supplies and there are even differences between different series from the same manufacturer. For example Corsair's RM (as featured) and AX series have incompatible leads. So if you have more than one PC with modular power supplies keep the spare leads in their bags and label them. Throwing them all together in a box could result in an expensive mistake.
Thank god you replaced the psu i was scared if the system gonna explode😂 btw nice vids bud!
Absolutely great experiment and teaching lesson. I would add one more item - the cost for reducing the noise level - What was the total cost for this project. Thanks again, always great content.
Noctua fans are awesome I really liked the packaging of the Noctua fans
I have really enjoyed this mini series! The difference in noise is quite astonishing. Very much looking forward to your Ubuntu 22.04 review on this test rig and it will be interesting to see if the change in operating system makes any difference to noise levels.
I am looking forward to installing Ubuntu on the PC this week for the next video. :)
Another FANTASTIC video, Chris! Your content makes Sunday mornings very much worthwhile.
Thanks. :)
About modular cable psu: It's imperative to not use cables of different psu manufacturer or carefully check the psu pinout because it's not standardized like the ATX and molex connectors expecially the SATA/Molex cable. I know people who fryed some hdds.
Wise advice.
Thanks Chris, very impressive. I'm glad to see the whole gang got to be in the video! :-P
I have been replacing my power supplies with the 80+Gold's also. I have 2 cases that still have the very loud ones and it is going to be replaced as soon as there is a issue... I have one ready to be installed as soon as there is a failure...
LLAP 🖖
Very worthwhile doing. Thanks for sharing
Thanks Brian, most appreciated. :)
I was looking at the little noismaker at the back the whole time you were working on the PSU. All I could think was I hope he does something about that or it would be a real disappointment.
Noctua was why I shunned windowed cases. But my next build will use some of their nice Chromax fans and have a window with only the cooler and GPU having leds, eveything else will be black on black. Just because I now can without having brown fans.
I bought the RM550x too but ended up giving it to my brother in law and replacing it with the RM 650x
What a relief (and joy) to finally see a NORMAL PC on UA-cam.. All those "rocket ships to the moon" builds are so Zen'-depleted :O) Props to Mr. Scissors, s/he's sharp!
Really impressive result.
Even though these are upgrades we can all most likely do without issue, this is an EC video and that alone makes it worth watching!
It would be much more difficult to attach the cables to the power supply when it is inside the PC case.
The old power supply already had the cables coming out of a hole on the back of the supply! Much easier to do it like Chris did!
Another liquid cooled design feature : It puts the CPU heat outside along with the other heat inside the case. One drawback though, motherboard chip sets with heat sinks that rely on airflow from the CPU fan may require fan's of their own now. Use curved leading edge bladed fans like Christopher is doing here and those will be quiet to
I've tried to build a super quiet pc as well, but also ended up removing any hdd because they would sometime resonate in the case.
Also downside a of quiet pc's: coil whine coming from the psu, motherboard or gpu becomes much more noticable if one of them suffers from it.
My 2x case fans and CPU fan are also Noctua. They fit my Cooler Master MasterBox E300L quite well.
Back in 2016 december pre-ordered my Seasonic Prime 850w 80+ Titanium power supply, it was delivered from first batch to me on 2017 January - going strong since then... back in 2017 bought 4 x Noctua NF-A14 fans which I use to this day, along with 3 x NF-A12x25 fans on 360mm Artic Liquid Freezer II all in one liquid cooler. You can easily sleep in same room when computer is doing video encoding 80-100% load on Ryzen 9 5950x.
Well done. Maybe make a video series on water cooling a pc.
Great video! Need some of those fans for my 3d printer! It's noisy!
Thank you - this is a very good series!
@ExplainingComputers
When you get a GPU, do yourself the favor of buying something like a GTX 1050 or GTX 1650. They both are still very power efficient and quiet, but are leaps and bounds better than a 1030 in the area of performance, especially for anything where CUDA will be utilized.
Thanks for this. A 1050 or 1650 would indeed be more powerful, but would destroy the whole purpose of this PC. It has to be quiet as in recording room quiet, and I know from experience that a 1050+ is not. :)
Only you to create an interesting content about power supply and fan 😊
Quiet is good! But I like the noise of vents too.
Impressive improvement in extending the life of your i5. I, myself, favour Cryorig's silent series fans. I find they're adequately quiet in one of my rigs.
Nice work, equalizing the air flow tends to get overlooked during an upgrade.
I love modular power supplies.
They are so much nicer for cable management.
Keith
Another amazing upload! thanks a bunch for the fantastic content!
It must be quiet, because even when wearing headphones I can only hear my PC's fans when you play the clip of the quiet PC's audio! I have the same passive GT 1030 in my PC as it is a Ryzen rig, and it works well for everything I need and even some very light gaming.
Thanks for the upload! Your videos are educational yet greatly entertaining 👍
Hooray for Noctua! :) Austrian quality!
Very informative video as always Chris but one thing has me puzzled. Why the rear case fan? With the tower cooler on the cpu pulling air from the front and exhausting it out the back a rear case fan seems to be overkill. I would have thought that a rear fan would only be needed if the cpu cooler was sitting flat blasting hot air into the bottom of the power supply. Additionally under load the cpu fan may spin quite a bit faster than the rear case fan causing an imbalance in the airflow. My Haswell i7 system has one fan at the front with a tower cooler on the cpu and no rear case fan. Been like that for years with no heat problems and little to no noise from the two fans. Under load I can feel warm air being pushed out of the rear of the case and that comes from the cpu cooler alone. It would be interesting to me and perhaps others if you were to revisit this in the future and take sound and temp readings with the rear case fan removed. I suspect there would be no difference and if that were the case then you would now have one spare case fan for your next project!
This may well be true. I decided to use the front and rear fans, and as large as possible, to move the required airflow with the minimal fan rotation. But one may well have been enough as you say.
Often overlooked, but a great idea - thank you Christopher..... I must admit I'm lazy and simply hide the computer under the desk.... :-)
Great vid. As a PC enthusiast myself, fan noise has always been a thorn in my side. Nice that manufactures are providing near silent solutions for powerful PC's these days.
Your upgrade and tests make sense as Britain is raising its energy prices. Having new fans and energy-efficient PSUs is indeed quite crucial for reducing noise pollution, excessive energy consumption as well as cooler temperatures to keep the motherboard and hard drives safe as they don't like heat that would brick the HDDs and maybe melt the soldering or worse pop several of those capacitors etc
Those silicon mounts are a great addition, they reduce the case resonance quite a bit on a computer that runs hot but at those low low fan speeds that shouldn't make much of a difference.
This edition inspired a question. Are there standard dimensions for power supplies, or do you have to check very carefully that a proposed replacement will actually fit in the available space, and have conveniently placed mountings?
Velcro cable ties as used here are probably perfectly fine for a stationary application like a desktop, but if a more robust grip is required, there are re-usable variants of the otherwise single-use zip tie. (Invented for possibly transient mountings in racing car, light aircraft, &c.)
Just a thought inspired by shovelling crud out ot desktop machines; put a light filter material (A/C, vacuum cleaner, or similar) on the outside (sucking side) of the front fan, to trap any dust that might otherwise get in and settle on the board. The fan might have to work a little harder, but it'll kep the interior cleaner.
A regularly modified project like this machine might not be unopened long enough to accrete a significant layer of dust, in which case the effort wouldn't be justified.
atx in height and width is standard, the depth can be different, from like 120 mm to up to like 200mm on the 1500watts units and 2000watts ones, but those will go in enormous cases where space is not a real problem, under 750watts most psus are like this, around 130 to 140mm
@@arch1107 2kw's not a power supply, it's a space heater! :-)*
@@parrotraiser6541 well, with the new gpus soon to be released and the intel cpus, 1000 watts is the new minimum for some people
Good choice. It's a Corsair RM750 I have in my system. I bought it last year, before a major system upgrade, which meant I was future proofed! Handles my current system without any issue at all. (AMD Ryzen 5 3700x, 32gb ram, Nvidia GTX 1660 GPU and 3 HHds and 1 NVME ssd.
I was surprised that there was no additional gasket between the power supply and the metal PC case to reduce vibration noise. Is the power supply itself plastic?
The power supply is metal.
nice, I really did not think you could achieve under 30dB with this case.
old cases were not great but in terms of airflow, noise, they use thick metal sheets that absorb alot of noise
So what's actually left of the original PC now? Just the case and the optical drive?
Certainly seems so. That old case really sticks out now, since it doesn't have a motherboard tray. Meaning, Chris had to just shove those PSU cables in with everything else.
@@cgraham6 as we did in the past, hidden on top of the dvd drive lol
Very interesting as usual.
@ 15:10 I find the holes in the grid are too small.
In this case, I prefer to jigsaw a hole and add a wire grid behind the fan.
**
Très intéressant comme d'habitude.
@ 15:10 je trouve que les trous de la grille sont trop petits.
Dans ce cas, je préfère découper à la scie sauteuse un trou et ajouter une grille en fils derrière le ventilateur.
I think your setup is quite balanced because 100% passive cooling on anything above a 4th gen i3 is not practical. Mid to high-end CPUs and reasonably powerful graphics cards require some sort of fan coolers. How about different types of water coolers? Water coolers are not cheap or simple by design and the PCs with that type of a cooler aren't very good for portability. Your setup is fairly balanced. 👍👍
Regarding expensive: a night at the cinema will set you back (depending on country) 15 USD for the ticket, 15 USD for pop corn, drinks, snacks, and 3-5 for travel. You are entertained for 2 hours and will then forget the plot of the movie a week after (unless it is an exceptionally good one). The same 35 USD gets you almost two Noctua which will provide you joy every day you use the PC :)
A nice way to look at it. :)
I am amazed the ATX (and family) cases and their hulking-great power supplies are still a thing. In the age of tablets, phones, SBCs they really are hampered by some old technology standards. There are some great tiny form factor pcs around that don't have these old things, some of which have the volume of an ATX power supply! I suppose if you must have a big graphics card and other things, there is no choice. Apple often lead the way, as they design their own hardware.
This is so true.
Superb video as always Chris. Think I might do the same upgrades to my PC. It's not noisy by any stretch, but who doesn't like a little less noise ... and an excuse to upgrade 👍
I only discovered your channel about a week ago and have been bingeing through the last 10 years. Great stuff
Regarding the silent PC upgrade. To be fair the lightweight generic case you used didn't really help you very much.
For the last 10 years or so , (and several build/upgrades), I have use a Fractal Design 3 case. Very solid with good airflow, dust filtering and sound deadening materials applied to the sides and probably the top of the case. My current build, dating from late 2017, is a Ryzen 5 1600 processor with an 8GB R570 gpu plus various SSD's and HDD's. I have two front case fans and one rear fan which I think were supplied with the case. My PSU is a Corsair, (can't remember which model but around 600W), and I always fit my PSU's to draw air from inside the case - reduces dust intrusion and supplements the rear case fan. Temps and noise are quite acceptable.
For the next upgrade I'll definitely be looking at some of those larger and slower revolving Corsair fans. I think that the Fractal Design case will last me a few years yet as my under the desk machine.
Impressive. Substantial reduction in noise.
Nice PSU - I got an EVGA 600W 80plus from Amazon for £29.99 recently as a spare! Not modular but a superb PSU!
That was a good price for an 80plus PSU. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Indeed the day after it was £37.99! Worse thing I bought an indestructible Shaver for £96 as amazon was more expensive. My bro text I fancy one got it for him the next day half price at £39.99. It is a Remington USB rechargeable shaver and yellow. Trust me it is SUPERB!!
This has to be the best Noctua "advertising" ever created. ;-) Next time I build a PC I will strongly consider Noctua.