Thinking about building my own gaming computer. So many questions

Did some motherboard research and figured out the usb port question (1 mb header covers 2 front ports, at least for type a) and just generally got more comfortable with the idea of doing a full build.

I also identified the remaining pieces I want, namely scrapping the $40 cooler master hyper 212 for a $70 bequiet dark rock slim. The only non-bequiet fan I’m keeping is the psu fan, having fallen in love with the seasonic focus 750W platinum. (Platinum only because it’s only $10 more than the gold.) Based on the conversation here, and the PCPartPicker result of 384W for the final rig including video card, 750W seems right. The only other non-bequiet fans will be on the eventual video card.

Final build assuming a fractal define 7 compact case shows up with little or no inconsistencies between newegg and pcpartpicker other than the obvious when the latter finds a cheaper alternative on amazon.

I’m having last minute cold feet about the case because of thermals. The room it’s in does get hot and stuffy in the summer, especially with a computer running. Of course I almost never put the computer through its paces, so it’s probably just cold feet and I’ll get the fractal compact.

I am, however, loving the idea of the bequiet Silent Base 802 (newegg link). It’s got all the front ports I need, and the front and top panels can be replaced with attractive mesh panels that look quite nice, maybe for the summer months. Much louder that way no doubt, but it’d be nice to be able to comfortably “air it out” if gaming on a hot summer day. Only problem is it’s huge, similar the non-compact fractal define 7. Being too big is why I’m not looking at the non-compact fractal to begin with.

Other than the case issue, I’m essentially ready to buy as listed. Of course if I go with the bequiet case I don’t need fans. Unfortunately it comes with pure wings 2 instead of silent wings 3, but good enough. Including the replacement fans for the fractal, both cases total the same price.

All set, ready to buy. I ordered the fractal case yesterday since shipping time is a week. Everything else ships much quicker.

So as I check various prices, you can’t miss this giant, most popular negative review on Amazon for the Dark Rock Slim and also Silent Wings 3 individually:

Long Scary Amazon Review

So first thing first, I am leaving the review for both the BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4 and BeQuiet Silent Wings 3 at the same time, so you can see the context of my review.

I want to start by addressing that I am a sound engineer, and a person with an ear that most just don’t have. I have difference in mini-decibel range (10th of a decibel), I am a recording engineer, with a psychology understanding of the brain, and I have built computers for a while now. I have tried more fans you can imagine, but actually listened to them besides of using them as well.

Here is what I can tell you for both of Dark Rock Pro 4 and BeQuiet Silent Wings:
They produce frequences below the level of human ear hearing, and above hearing range of normal human being.

We can hear from 20hz to 20,000 hz, but not everyone, some start hearing from 45 hz, and only hear up to 14,000 hz. Hearing is very important, but the way the brain works is even more important in this review.

The BeQuiet fans in Dark Rock Pro 4 are Silent Wing 3 fans, with 135 mm variation fan specific only to BeQuiet coolers. Those motors/bearing in the fan produce frequencies around 6hz and above 19,000 hz.

Why does it matter? Well, 5 hz is frequency of the brain, if the sound produced is around that frequency it affect the brain, and it can actually make the person very angry (without knowing) or make them sick, physically or mentally. Frequencies above 17 hz are very damaging to the ear drum, they make your ears hurt, and you will feel a dull pain in your eardrums. Reason why, is the follicles in the ear drum are damaged in the process, and the pain is of hair follicles dying. Hair follicles in our ears act as nerves that transfer fluctuation of sound as perceivable sound that is transferred directly to brain, and then decoded into a set of known memories within our database of the brain. The problem with high frequencies is that they damage the ears, make you go deaf eventually, and erode your ear canal follicles in the process. Here is a key issue on top of it, frequencies above 17khz are very seldom heard by a human ear, around 18,000 hz-19,000 khz is where the dangerous zone trully begins, you cannot hear those frequencies (most people) but you are killing your hearing, but your brain is subjected by the sound and goes “insane” after a while. To subject a person to a 19,000-20,000 khz will cause a person to go insane, as will producing 5 hz - 8 hz, that range is very dangerous as well.

I studied science behind it, so I understand it, but I am not paranoid about it.

After sitting for 2 hours next to 3 fans of Silent Wings 3, I started getting annoyed, and I could not figure it out at first. I started hearing my fridge more, I suddenly started hearing air conditioners around my house (that I never noticed), and those sounds started hurting my brain and ears.

I am a logical person, so I started to check outside and inside for any kind of malfunction. What I realized that the frequency of the fans heightened the perception of sounds around, but NOT in a good way. I isolated the issue to the 3 fans first. I removed them, and my pain in the ears and irratation has subsided by about 80%. I returned the fans back to Amazon, but was greeted with the same issue in 4-5 hours of sitting at my computer. My moods are very stable, and they are not fluctuating up and down by the way.

I realized that the fans in the Dark Rock Pro 4 are causing the same issue, but to a lesser degree. Due to them being less rpm, but the frequency is the same, just to a lesser degree.

After removing the cooler, I realized it was not loudness of the fans, but the frequency it produced. I ABSOLUTELY would recommend to STAY AWAY from these fans for health reasons.

That is of course if you belive me, I have nothing to gain by it, but wanted to warn people.

Also I don’t blame BeQuiet, as I am sure they are not aware of this, but maybe you will see that email and do a revision, because I care for people in this situation.
I will be sending them a separate email as well.

Other reasons for return: I am returning Dark Rock Pro 4 for several reasons, this is the main issue. Second issue is that cooling is very unstable. That part is more trivial now. It cannot compete with Corsair H105 that I had, and to me temps are jumping up and down. Tightening the bolts a bit less on the cpu, untill you hit the pressure is enough. Otherwise it will push the thermal paste all over, and thin it out too much where is more physical contact with the cooler, but no thermal paste to speak of now.

I would stay away from this cooler because of the fans first of all, and also, you cannot switch the fans to something else. It uses mounting mechanism that is specific to BeQuiet cooler. I would stay away altogether from it, because of those frequency issues, and unstable cooling performance. The fins are too closely stacked together, and fans cannot push substantial air through the fins to cool it. Fan is too low of rpm, and you cannot replace the fans with off-brand ones like Noctua.

Also, the cooler scuffs from tiniest contact of mounting brackets, chips the paint so easy…you will likely be pissed after a while. Fins bend so easy too, it’s crazy fragile, and black paint just flakes off the fins, and from the mounting brackets.

Quality is poor in my opinion, but I saw some success with it in HIGHLY ventilated case, but you have to be realistic too. I have Cooler Master Geminii S524 cooler, with 4 heatpipes total, and Dark Rock Pro 4 has 14 (7 on each side), my old Cooler Master has a downward fan and never pushes above 72 Celcius on full Noctua fan profile, with Dark Rock Pro 4 I have seen 68-70 on full RPM load. What?

Geminii S524 was $35 by the way. Good engineering vs not so good. BUT…I will give the cooler 3 stars, because it’s not garbage, but it’s poorly designed, and not optimized for overclocking stability. I run Intel i7 4790k at 4.8 ghz, but you are telling me that Geminii with 4 heatpipes handles the cpu just as good but with only 1 Noctua fan vs BeQuiet 2 fans?

Results may vary, but I know what I am talking about, and I have to say…if you want great performance, perhaps go with water cooling AIO, or Noctua’s high end air coolers.

Hopefully it explains it all, even when it comes to cooling with it. Cooler is fragile, fins, paint, and installation is semi-difficult if you have motherboard out of the case, but if it’s in the case mounted…my goodness…may the peace be with you, my friends…it will drive you nuts trying to put those bolts into the bracket.

Unless you have 4 arms and patience of a god.


This guy is schizophrenic, right? Who thinks to themself “Hmmm, my mood has changed, and my moods don’t change, so first thing’s first, lemme check for imperceptible transmissions from my various devices…”

I mean, right? Kind of need answer fast as I’m about to actually purchase an entire case-full of silent wings 3 fans. (3 case fans plus the cpu cooler.)

As for my noise, my build choices ended up being the common recommendations for silent-optimized builds, so a lot of reviews have info on similar setups. One of these on Amazon (for the dark rock slim I think) says his phone measures 0 - 2 dB when he lays it on the computer directly.

Mine reads 42 - 45 dB, but in fairness if I hold the phone near my face where I normally sit it’s more like 30 - 33 dB. Still much too loud for me. Unfortunately the possibility of the noise going away (soon, like next week!) has made the noise intolerable.

Yes, the guy sounds like a nut. And, hey, if you find yourself having homicidal impulses using your computer then switching out the fans is a fairly easy (if tedious) and inexpensive process in the grand realm of PC building.

He’s also wrong about the thermal paste thing. He complains about the cooler by saying “Otherwise it will push the thermal paste all over, and thin it out too much where is more physical contact with the cooler, but no thermal paste to speak of now.” but… uhh… that’s not how thermal paste works.

See, in a perfect world, you would have a precisely milled and flat CPU lid against a precisely milled and flat cooler block and both would make 100% contact and heat would transfer between them. In reality, neither is perfectly flat and there’s micro gaps and grooves and maybe one is ever so slightly bowed or concave, preventing perfect contact. Thermal paste is designed to fill those gaps and allow heat to transfer since otherwise they have air in them and air isn’t thermally conductive for our purposes. But thermal paste is still less efficient than metal-on-metal contact. That’s why you don’t want to glop it in there thick – besides making a mess, you decrease how effective your cooler is. You only want it where it’s needed.

Weirdly, that’s exactly what he’s complaining about – he’s tightening his cooler and the paste is coming out. In reality, if notable amounts of paste are being squeezed out then (a) you’re probably using too much paste and (b) you didn’t need paste there. Now, you could potentially damage the bracket or socket by over tightening but that’s why coolers have thumbscrews. You’re really just supposed to hand-tighten and maybe give a final quarter twist with the screwdriver rather than screw it in like you’re hanging drywall.

Ha! Great point. Silent wings it is, and if I start to go all The Shining, switch to some hideous but awesome noctuas.

The more I read up on low frequency sound and how it can drive you insane or even kill you, the more I feel like I’m getting sucked into a flat earth fake news rabbit hole.

On the plus side, if you go full tinfoil hat and buy into that it’s totally real and dangerous, you can protect yourself with sound insulation. And that’s exactly what the fractal case is. So either way I should be good.

Most components ordered and arriving later this week or early next week at the latest. Just a couple more items to go.

Before I order the last odds and ends including the case fans, what thermal paste should I get for the dark rock slim? Also, do I need any cables? Like would a drive arrive without a SATA cable or anything? Any specialized tools or static shock prevention or anything?

I have a little computer toolkit from forever ago and that’s pretty much it.

I kind of wish it was true. I’ve been feeling sporadically unaccountably irritable lately. It would be nice if it was just the noise of the washing machine, or whatever. That’s easy to replace.

But it’s probably a combination of stress, lack of quality sleep, and a year of limited human contact. That’s much harder to fix.

Rereading to be sure I haven’t forgotten anything, two quick points I missed the first time around:

Exactly what I was looking for, thanks much!

That’s my mistake. I was thinking of old IDE cables, which is what my budget box from 2013 has. It sucked adding a second HDD with those ridiculously wide and stiff cables.

This does read as a little nutty, but that said I do somewhat buy into the idea that frequencies that are outside the range of human hearing are not necessarily benign. I don’t know enough about the science here but I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Might be hard to do the research and avoid the inevitable pseudo-science but I might at least do some Googling on the suggestions made.

Yeah I got to be honest I kind of buy into it. But I did do some googling, and a lot of the stuff I read points to sound insulation being effective. So I do think the noise dampening insulation in the case should probably keep any effect like that to a minimum.

For example, I have long understood that some wind power turbines can cause resonance that some people find extremely unpleasant to live near. Low frequency seems on its face to be consistent with that. One article I read researching this low frequency stuff mentioned wind turbines and how you can put sound insulation in your walls to protect yourself, so that’s when I felt better.

It’s possible the dude who wrote that review had a mesh case open air flow design and maybe hardwood floors with lots of echoing.

To clarify, I had heard that about wind turbines years ago, and then this morning in a panic researching the evils of low frequency noise, one of the articles gave several examples, one of which was wind turbines.

So my first thought was oh shit, I’ve heard of that, this could be real. But then the article said to you can put sound insulation in your walls to block the effect. So now I’m thinking the fractal case has that covered so I’m good.

I don’t really mind if the inside of my case is a haven of evil sound. As long as it’s trapped inside the case, I think I kind of like it. The room is also sound dampening with thick carpeting and lots of stuff on the walls.

Everything is ordered, woohoo! Amazon stuff should be in a day or so, Newegg by the weekend or early next week. Here’s the final tally including tax and prorated shipping where applicable:

Total Component Model Vendor
$202.05 Motherboard MSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk Newegg
$189.19 CPU Intel i5 10400 Amazon
$69.12 CPU Cooler Dark Rock Slim Amazon
$157.38 Power Supply Seasonic Focus 750W Platinum Newegg
$84.02 Memory 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 3200 Newegg
$165.57 C: Drive 1 TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe Amazon
$244.59 D: Drive 2 TB Samsung 860 Evo 2.5" SDD Amazon
$115.90 Case Fractal Define 7 Compact Newegg
$77.62 Case Fans Silent Wings 3 (Two 140s, one 120) Newegg
$14.76 Misc Arctic Silver 5 + kit, wrist strap Amazon
$1,320.20 hardware

I couldn’t find a single tube of Arctic Silver 5, only doubles so instead I got a combo kit with a 3.5g tube, the two-bottle cleaning kit, a microfiber cloth, and an anti-static wriststrap for like $15. A 2-pack of the arctic silver would have been $12, so figured meh, good enough.

It’s snowing here right now. Is below freezing bad for computer parts in general? Who knows how cold the trucks are.

IME, simple cold-soak is harmless to the components. My only precaution in that situation is to allow them to warm to ambient in a low-humidity environment (normal indoor winter air would be OK unless you live in a steambath). Just to avoid condensation on the electronics and, in general, allow the moving bits like fan bearings to come up to normal operation temps (especially if they use any non-dry lubricant).

The SSD won’t come with a SATA cable but your motherboard comes with two of them. I don’t see anything else in your parts list that would require more.

For the record, I’m not discrediting the general concept of subsonic noises causing some physiological issue in people. But there’s a lot of road between “This general concept is plausible” and “these specific fans will drive you into a rage and I know it’s true because I’m a sound engineer with hearing beyond that of mere mortals”. Hell, maybe the fans only affect people with magic bat ears.

Do you want to build it for the fun of building it, or are you trying to just save money? It used to be that building your own computer saved a lot of money. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Especially when you factor in all the extra time you spend finding the best deals on each component, the pay off is not as great as it once was. There are a lot of custom PC companies that let you customize the whole think on their site. They often have sales and great deals, and you can come away with something about as cheap as you would have built yourself. And it will come with a warranty and tech support. . .

(EDIT: I’m assigning an $1850 price tag to my machine for a fair comparison: $1320 on hardware so far, $100 for OEM Windows, and $430 for a video card down the road.)

Well it’s too late now, of course, but yes I did check out around a half-dozen custom shops. There were competitive options to be found, some much faster than this machine I’m assembling for the same price.

Hard drives are really expensive right now, at least with all the custom shops I looked at. Digital Storm, for example, where I start with the lowest end Intel desktop (i5 10400F) the package starts around $1500. That leave $350 to play with (including tax and shipping) to compare against my final system with the video card next year. (Hoping to buy a 3060 ti for around $350 this coming Black Friday.)

First I kick up the store-brand 600W psu to 850W for $36, no sweat. Next come the hard drives, and that’s when it all comes crashing down. I can actually pick the same two Samsung drives as my build, but my chosen C: drive adds $142 to the price and my D: drive adds a whopping $262 to the price, for a price hike of $400 on hard drives alone.

Then of course with shortages the 3060 ti they can sell me right now adds $511, meaning they’re probably charging $700 for it. (Assuming the default card is around $200, so when you switch it’s a $511 difference.)

With those customizations the price has now jumped to $2494 and it’s still just a lousy i5 10400. Compared to my version for $1850. Every site I looked at was similar, even Dell. Especially MicroCenter. Hard drives just killed my budget every time.

I think you were correct back in November, and will be correct again once the shortages subside, but right at this moment, if you don’t need a video card, I think building your own is a better value.

I also fell in love with most of the parts I chose, especially the fractal case. But even the power supply, I am excited for my sweet sweet Seasonic Focus platinum and may end up clutching it like Golem. I don’t want some scrotty off-brand power supply in my $2500 system, y’know?

Someone really should sell quiet system bundles. Probably too many headaches dealing with all the overheating complaints, but this setup I’ve bought really does appear to be some kind of de-facto “budget” standard for quiet builds: Fractal case, bequiet fans and cooler, seasonic psu, samsung hard drives. Then the higher tier would drop bequiet and go full noctua. Not sure if fractal would still be the first choice for a money-is-no-object build, but noctua fans are definitely top of the heap it seems to me.

Just found this in my first Google. Quiet Gaming PC | Silent Gaming, Extreme Performance (silentpc.com)

Yeah I saw a bunch of budget quiet systems, but none of them are particularly well optimized for silence. The very first, easiest thing to do is pick a solid panel case so you can load it up with sound insulation. Can’t insulate tempered glass. Anything with tempered glass (as all the pictures in your link show) isn’t a silence-optimized build. It’s a no-brainer “freebie” choice in that tempered glass doesn’t let air in either, so you aren’t losing any air flow.

Clicking on the budget option in your link just to check, it comes with a Corsair Carbide Spec-04. which is probably a fine case but it’s pretty clearly a mesh airflow design. That makes it a performance case, not a quiet case.

Pretty much everyone selling computers advertises “quiet” but when you look at their specs, they did not make consistently quiet choices. I have read that gigabyte video cards are good for quiet builds, and noctua fans are great, so they made multiple good choices. But come on, a mesh airflow case? Kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Meanwhile, for all the quiet component listings on newegg and amazon, you’ll see guys leave feedback that includes their machine specs, and many, many of them are very similar, including a fractal case with bequiet fans. I don’t see any of those options in the quiet builds linked.

Sticking with that link, the highest end version, if you click it, comes with an NZXT H510i case. I’ve read good things about NZXT, but that model is not a quiet case. Not only does it have a tempered glass side panel, it has a tempered glass front panel!

The biggest drawback of a quiet build is the solid front panel, which is the airflow killer. If you want silence, you deal with it for the sound dampening. That case has the same thermal issue from having a closed front but it doesn’t even have sound insulation to show for it. Just pure asthetics. (Every bit as valid as building for quiet, but not when marketing yourself as quiet.)

What I was getting at wasn’t that people don’t sell systems marketed as quiet; just about everyone does. But if you decide to build yourself a silent build, you will see some similar combinations come up over and over. I was saying I wonder why nobody sells those specific combinations that home builders gravitate toward?

For example, the top positive review (as opposed to the “they make evil sound!” guy) for the dark rock slim includes this bit:

Fractal case, bequiet fans, dark rock slim cooler*, seasonic platinum psu, smasung evo drives, even a friggin’ msi motherboard. This is pretty much the most popular “home builder quiet computer” there is, which is why I am following suit.

Note that I did not read this review (or the crazy guy review) until yesterday morning when I was checking prices to buy. As in, all my choices had been made. And the very first review I see is a glowing recommendation for the silence of almost exactly the same build as mine, only difference is it was from last year and used last year’s models.

*It’s a dark rock slim review; he only mentions all the other parts.

Part of the deal with noise is that you have to balance it against everything else. Making a silent computer is simple – get low power components that can be passively cooled as much as possible and stick them in a box with just enough airflow that they don’t cook. But if you don’t want a low power processor and GT 710 video card, you need to start making allowances. That Fractal case gets good marks for noise reduction but its cooling and airflow scores aren’t great. That makes sense since fans make noise and sound travels through holes and the Fractal case is light on fans and doesn’t have much venting for air. This won’t be a concern for you since you’re running an i5 and not overclocking it but it could be for other people. Omniscient’s link seems to be geared towards people who want soundproofing solutions for more performance machines.

For me, I have an i7-9700k running at 5GHz and an RTX 3080 so my system would bake in that Fractal case. Instead, I’m using the ridiculously large Thor V2 which comes with big ole 230mm fans that move tons of air at low speed and a whole bunch of ventilation. My system runs quietly (not silently but at/below ambient room noise) since all the air flow helps eliminate the need for noisy fan spin-ups but the cost is having a case that barely fits under my desk and can house children. And my GPU temps dropped 10C while gaming with that side fan feeding it vs my old case which, again, means less fan noise off the video card’s cooler.

Point being, especially if you’re going for performance, there’s more than one way to skin a noisy cat.

Oh yeah, for sure, it’s not a performance build. But my point was that there is a market out there in the DIY world of people who care more about quiet than performance. But I would be shocked if anyone could find one of those “customize your build” sites that offer a half dozen choices per component that has even a single fractal case or bequiet fan or cooler to choose. (Lost of noctua fans, though.)

I do concede that they probably don’t because it’s a terrible build, and there would be endless complaints about overheating. But for how terrible it is, it’s pretty popular in the home build world.

Even conceding all that, I can’t help but refer back to that positive Amazon review I quoted two posts up that shows a system pretty similar to yours, and here’s what he has to say about performance:

80c is a little toasty, sure, but it sounds like he’s doing exactly what you’re saying, yes? Overclocking an i7-9700k at 5.0GHz in a tiny fractal case and air-cooled with a dark rock slim. Only difference is he put in 6 case fans to my 3, but I may follow suit when I add a video card.

(If 2080s run much cooler than 3080s, then your point stands. I have no idea about video cards, having done zero research into them since buying one hasn’t yet been an option.)