They get excellent reviews and with fans, one concern is lifespan in addition to dB and CFM. I was considering them or Noctua but I eventually decided on Corsair ML fans.
What I mean is setup against the wall outside the utility room. My desk is up against a wall that divides the rec room from the utility room in my basement.
Maybe, maybe not. A case can swallow some of the noise, whereas with a bench build, everything that makes noise can send that noise directly to you with nothing obstructing it. (“Bench build” as in a test bench where you plug all your components together outside of the case to verify they work before you build the machine inside the case. I did not do this, but some people do.)
Fractal (technically “Fractal Design”) is a German company that makes pretty nice computer cases. They bring that German attention to detail to their cases. Not top of the line, but not crazy expensive either. I would describe them as affordable luxury cases. https://www.fractal-design.com/ I went with the Define 7 Compact because I wanted a black box, no colored lights or glass side panel, sound dampening, and for the case to not be too large. So many modern cases are huge! (My previous computer was a 2013 pre-built that was very loud with ugly RGB and a weird shape such that I couldn’t set anything on top of it. Replacing that with quiet black box was very satisfying.)
While fractal cases are a common choice for silence builds, their fans are not particularly impressive. So for people building for silence, if they go with fractal for the case, they typically replace the fans with nicer fans. Be quiet is sort of Pepsi to Noctua’s Coca-Cola in the world of quiet computer fans. Maybe a hair cheaper? Definitely cheaper if you want them to be black, which I did.
Note that fractal hasn’t exactly cornered the market on quiet cases. Be quiet has their own lineup, Lian Li has some solid choices, etc… And quite honestly, all modern computers are just quieter than they were a decade ago, so building specifically for silence has a slightly performative element to it. But I didn’t care; I was all-in on silence and am still happy with my choices now 4.5 years later.
One other thing to consider is to over-provision your PSU. My original build only needed like 400W – I specifically built for low power for low noise – and then I got a 750W PSU using the logic that the load would be so low that the PSU fan would never even need to turn on. This logic proved correct and I love it. I have since upgraded my video card such that my PSU is now only a little overprovisioned, but it’s still pretty quiet. The best advantage was being able to upgrade the video card without having to upgrade the power supply.
Here’s my parts list for my dream upgrade, also a silence build, which I’m kind of thinking I might do later this year. Maybe. I’m lazy. Building a computer is a bit of a hassle and my computer still works fine. I mainly just want a more powerful cpu for games like cities skylines, but if I’m upgrading, may as well go whole hog, y’know? Maybe if there’s some good black friday sales on some of my parts…
No video card because I have a 4070 I’m happy with and am sticking with 1080p for the foreseeable future.
Some thoughts:
The motherboard is probably not a great choice. But I do like the msi tomahawk motherboard in my current system so I figured stick with them.
Lots of hard drives. Note that you do not want a mechanical spinning drive if you want silence. They make noise when they spin.
One of my weird quirks in terms of silence builds is that I worry about clashing fan frequencies. Meaning I don’t want to mix and match fans from different companies. My current system has a seasonic psu, but it turns out be quiet has a psu near the top of the psu tier list, so for me that’s a no-brainer. (That tier list is old; there’s a newer one linked on reddit here.) This puts be quiet ahead of noctua for me since noctua doesn’t make psus. Of course, you can’t get a video card with be quiet fans, but you can’t have everything.
As for the case, it’s worth pointing out that some people view the define 7 compact as a “hot box.” It will definitely run hotter than a mesh case. And in fact, a mesh case might allow the fans to run slower and end up being quieter. For a high end build with an 80-series or better video card, that’s probably even likely.
The Dark Rock Pro is not a particularly good cooler. The only reason I’m leaning that way is because it’s be quiet for the compatible fan noise frequencies. (This may not even be a real thing.) But also, the x3D cpus are pretty easy to cool and don’t need a particularly beefy cooling solution.
Why 3 SSDs? I use two, one for programs and one for data.
Four, technically. My current system has:
1 TB system M.2 (seems plenty big enough)
2 TB games M.2 (seems plenty big enough)
2 TB documents/media 2.5" SSD (running out of space)
1 TB 2.5" SSD internal backup (running out of space)
My thinking is keep the same size for system and games, get a 4 TB documents/media drive and then take the 2 TB drive out of my current system to use as the new machine’s internal backup. Effectively doubling the size of both my 2.5" SSDs.
I backup to a flash drive. I worry having it as internal that if I have ransomware that there is no hope of recovery whereas having a cycle of flash drives I can (hopefully) have an untainted copy. Also I can restore my data to any computer if it is external.
I also have an external spinning mechanical drive for backup. But it’s sooooooo sloooooooow!
I’m shit about making frequent backups, but it’s much easier to get myself to spend 2 minutes doing an internal backup than to pull out the external from the cabinet, plugging it in, then waiting 20 minutes or whatever for the copies to finish.
By this, do you mean harmonics…? Like different fans could maybe cause constructive interference with each other…?
Yes, exactly. And I want to stress that this might be something that is entirely made up in my head.
Though I will point out that I did have a 3050 before I upgraded to the 4070 I have now, and the 3050 made a higher frequency noise that felt (to me) like it clashed with the lower frequency noise of all my other fans. My 4070 is a pleasant lower frequency sound. (Bigger fans?)
EDIT: For the 3050 I used MSI Afterburner to apply a custom fan curve so I never heard it, so it was a moot issue. With the 4070 I did the same for about a year, then earlier this year I finally just bailed on the custom fan curve and let it run its stock curve. I still can’t usually hear it, but when I do (faintly), it’s fine.
FWIW Noctua fans have rubber on the corners (at least) to absorb any vibration. You can see them on the fans in the pic I provided a few posts above.
Fantastic fans but they are expensive. Rolls Royce of the fan world.
So do the higher end be quiet fans. Specifically the Silent Wings series. (I have SW3 in my current build, SW4 in my parts list above.)
Essentially the BMW to Noctua’s Rolls Royce.
Another approach is getting larger fans and running them much slower, such as 180mm fans. Fewer cases support that size, but they aren’t too rare or attract much of a premium.
I’d think you’d only get 180mm or bigger on a side-mounted fan. My PC is pretty big and it can only manage 140mm up front and in the top (and one exhaust in the back). And even that is a bit bigger than “normal” (“normal” generally being 120mm).
Mobo isn’t really that critical to performance, so as long as it’s made by a decent company and not their bottom of the barrel budget model, sticking with what you know works is perfectly fine.
The Fractal Torrent comes with 180mm fans on the front. While it’s a pretty good case, reports are that the gpu runs hotter than other cases in that class.
The conclusion seems to be that the problem is the rear panel is entirely mesh, letting air exhaust through the entire height of the back. The trick for keeping your gpu cool is to have good airflow from bottom to top, but the torrent lets cool air escape out the bottom of the back, so it never gets forced upward.
The solution would be to block the lower part of the mesh so that air only goes out via the exhaust fan at the top of the back, but having to redneck engineer a $250 case is suboptimal at best.
Well, @EllisDee has a lot of hard drives and that can mess with how many PCI lanes each gets (not to mention the video card). I know my mobo will cut the video card PCI lanes from 16 to 8 depending on my M.2 drive setup (I made sure that did not happen…SATA is fine).
Nicer mobos will have more M.2 drive slots and (maybe) more generous with how many lanes each can get.
And, if you are into overclocking the mobo matters more.
This is something I actually worry about but am almost completely ignorant of. I don’t even know if my current motherboard – MSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk – is choking out my 4070 in terms of pci lanes because of my two M.2 NVME drives. I don’t even know where/how to look for the answer in the manual. (pdf) All it seems to mention is which SATA ports get disabled when you use the M.2 slots.
I’ve basically just settled on limiting myself to two M.2 slots and going 2.5" SSDs for the rest.
I asked my AI and here is its answer for your motherboard (so, grain of salt and all that):
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With the MSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk, you should be fine with two M.2 NVMe drives and still have full x16 lanes for your graphics card, but there are some specifics to be aware of:
M.2 Slot Configuration:
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M.2_1 slot (top slot): Connected directly to the CPU - uses 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU’s available lanes
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M.2_2 slot (bottom slot): Connected to the Z490 chipset - uses chipset PCIe lanes
Impact on Graphics Card:
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When using M.2_1, it does not affect your primary PCIe x16 slot (PCIE_1) - your graphics card will still get its full x16 lanes directly from the CPU
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The Z490 platform allocates PCIe lanes like this from the CPU:
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16 lanes for the primary PCIe x16 slot (PCIE_1)
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4 lanes for M.2_1
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This totals 20 lanes, which 10th gen Intel CPUs provide
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What to watch out for:
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If you populate certain SATA ports while using M.2_2, some SATA ports will be disabled (typically SATA 5 and 6 when M.2_2 is in use)
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The second PCIe x16 slot (PCIE_4) runs at x4 mode and shares bandwidth with other chipset devices
Bottom line: You can use both M.2 slots with NVMe drives and your graphics card will still receive all 16 PCIe lanes it needs. Just install your GPU in the top PCIe x16 slot (PCIE_1) and you’re good to go.
8x PCIe 3.0 won’t limit a 5090 outside of synthetic benchmarks so it really isn’t worth worrying over.
If you’re running a 5090 on a PCIe 2.0 CPU, you got bigger problems.