Ant wrote on May 15, 2016, 20:52:
According to my http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html history, I haven't done major desktop upgrades since 12/20/2010! Most of the hardwares are still there. I do need to clean them out and change their fans. I am surprised that both boxes still work!

Ha! That's great! I wish I had kept a list like that since my first PC in 1989 -- a Dell 386 with a 120 MB hard drive, decided not to go with a 200 MB drive because "who would ever need that much space?"

As I said in another topic my current PC is approaching it's 4th birthday. The recent release of DOOM is the first thing I've been interested in that would give it an issue. So... it's getting to be that time.

Mr. Tact wrote on May 15, 2016, 18:45:
Obviously it is time to fix that, Ant. Hop to it!

Haha, no time to play! I just gamed for about five/5 minutes for the whole weekend with a couple quick MAME games. Now, it is time to catch up with the Internet before tomorrow.

According to my http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html history, I haven't done major desktop upgrades since 12/20/2010! Most of the hardwares are still there. I do need to clean them out and change their fans. I am surprised that both boxes still work!

This comment was edited on May 15, 2016, 21:08.

Obviously it is time to fix that, Ant. Hop to it!

I am still using my ancient desktop computers from many years ago since I don't game.

jdreyer wrote on May 12, 2016, 04:44:

Mr. Tact wrote on May 11, 2016, 23:58:
As for the Earth dying. Bummer. Everything dies. Plants, animals, humans, planets, stars, even galaxies.

Life sucks, and in the end you die. Deal with it.

I'm sure you feel the same way in your personal life which is why your boss makes you work 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and you agree to it heartily. Never mind that you'll die of a heart attack at 50. Everything dies, right?

It is funny though how the public gets beat down with electricity usage and water usage and then business uses so much it makes our little cut backs trivial, but adds stress to our lives none the less focus on the residence part of the equation.

This comment was edited on May 12, 2016, 13:38.

PHJF wrote on May 11, 2016, 22:33:
You don't power down at night???

WHY DO YOU WANT EARTH TO DIE, MONSTER

LOL I have 4! 2 go into sleep though. My boot time is faster than SSD. But then again I have solar panels to.

Sepharo wrote on May 11, 2016, 21:52:
Am I the only one here who doesn't give a damn how loud my computer is?

I'm going to be wearing headphones all the time anyway. And I've been falling asleep to roaring case fans just about my whole life.

My goal is a near silent pc when doing non-gaming things, so you control fans etc based on heat. But when gaming, as you say the headset is on and the volume is loud. I would never hear my pc, so the fans all kick in accordingly. This would be a general person, general desktop build/thought I feel. An HTPC I'd be more bullish on being near silent always.

jdreyer wrote on May 12, 2016, 04:44:
I'm sure you feel the same way in your personal life which is why your boss makes you work 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and you agree to it heartily. Never mind that you'll die of a heart attack at 50. Everything dies, right?

I'm sure my employer would ask for that if they thought they could get it. I'm not saying it's all bad, and certainly I personally have gotten my fair share of "good". I was lucky enough to be born to a middle class family, in the US, in a time when it wasn't necessary for me to work in the fields as soon as I was able. Compared to a majority of the world's population, I've had it pretty easy.

That said, I tend to be a pessimist and while I've had a "good life" -- I can see the downside to most anything. Hence my mindset of "Life sucks". *shrug* Dislike/hate me for my cavalier attitude if you want, I'll take little offense.

I've wondered for a long time about the arguments about which will give a PC longer life -- being on 24/7 or getting powered down.

That's fucking horseshit, dude. Businesses especially should enforce sleep or powered down states after hours. Sleep uses ~10W. Whereas sleep may save a home user maybe $100 a year in power costs, it'll save tens of thousands for larger businesses.

Mr. Tact wrote on May 11, 2016, 23:58:
As for the Earth dying. Bummer. Everything dies. Plants, animals, humans, planets, stars, even galaxies.

Life sucks, and in the end you die. Deal with it.

I'm sure you feel the same way in your personal life which is why your boss makes you work 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and you agree to it heartily. Never mind that you'll die of a heart attack at 50. Everything dies, right?

PHJF wrote on May 11, 2016, 10:34:
PS4 is actually noisy as fuck, but my 970 with a blower fan gives it a run for its money. I got an ASUS 970 Turbo instead of ASUS 970 Strix because I have a white case and wanted the white GPU, but holy fuck is the Turbo noisy, even when idle. It completely drowns my case and cpu fans, and is probably the loudest GPU cooler I've ever owned.

Hey I got the same card. You have any issues with it? Ive lately seen some strange ghosting in games on my monitor, and think it could be due to the card being overclocked or something....

PHJF wrote on May 11, 2016, 22:33:
You don't power down at night???

WHY DO YOU WANT EARTH TO DIE, MONSTER

When I worked in an office, I powered down every night. Figured, 8 hours of sleep, 9 hours at work, no reason to leave the PC at home turned on all that time. Now, I'm here far more often and powering off just for the night doesn't seem necessary.

I've wondered for a long time about the arguments about which will give a PC longer life -- being on 24/7 or getting powered down. Never read anything that seemed definitive one way or the other. As for the Earth dying. Bummer. Everything dies. Plants, animals, humans, planets, stars, even galaxies.

Life sucks, and in the end you die. Deal with it.

Sepharo wrote on May 11, 2016, 23:16:
I'm the same way, just not with white noise. If there's a beeping, a whining, a high pitched humming, a rattle... It's going to annoy me and I'm going to find it. But fans? Nah they're fine.

Yeah, I'm usually okay with consistent white noise. I mean, my current PC (a mid-tower) is sitting less than arm's length away, on my desk, and it isn't a problem. BUT... I've occasionally had problems when a PC's fan noise will be just a bit too loud for me -- causing an issue.

On the Puget Systems page I linked, they claim 18 dba under load. And they actually check for things like vibration resonance of the equipment. Is it a bit pricey? A little. But you are talking about a system put together in the US, and includes lifetime labor and technical support, in the US. So, I see it as "the right way" to spend a little extra. I haven't actually bought from them yet, but I plan to.

Mr. Tact wrote on May 11, 2016, 22:12:
In general though, I've found I'm far more sensitive to low level background noise than most. When I still worked in an office, it wasn't that unusual for me to wander into the corridor and start asking people "what is that noise?" And have them say, "what noise?" I'd explain what I was hearing, then they would pause and listen and then say, "oh yeah, I hear it now." And it would be some stupid alert going off on the other side of the office or something...

I'm the same way, just not with white noise. If there's a beeping, a whining, a high pitched humming, a rattle... It's going to annoy me and I'm going to find it. But fans? Nah they're fine.

You don't power down at night???

WHY DO YOU WANT EARTH TO DIE, MONSTER

When I'm gaming, the PC noise level obviously is not an issue. The issue is when reading Blue's News or other things without an audio component.

In general though, I've found I'm far more sensitive to low level background noise than most. When I still worked in an office, it wasn't that unusual for me to wander into the corridor and start asking people "what is that noise?" And have them say, "what noise?" I'd explain what I was hearing, then they would pause and listen and then say, "oh yeah, I hear it now." And it would be some stupid alert going off on the other side of the office or something...

Am I the only one here who doesn't give a damn how loud my computer is?

I'm going to be wearing headphones all the time anyway. And I've been falling asleep to roaring case fans just about my whole life.

My PS4 is louder running Uncharted 4 than my PC going full tilt on The Division. I have 2 Asus Strix 970 cards and liquid cooling on the CPU and this thing is quiet. The case has really big fans that run silent as well. Corsair...540 I think? Air? Something. Also the Corsair PSU I am using runs silent. I got really lucky, because most of my upgrade last summer was free Newegg review items or reused stuff from my old Alienware. I pretty much only paid for the video cards.

I went through this exact thought process when building my new pc (tax return ftw!).

There have been some solid recommendations in this thread. I spent about a month researching everything I could to make a reasonably silent computer without breaking the bank and ended up with a ridiculously quiet build.

For a case, the fractal R5 was a no-brainer. Great price and the sound dampening material works *really* well. For maximum silence go with the windowless version (which is also cheaper). The fan speed control right on the front is really nice unless you would prefer to control them by software like from a smartphone.

I picked up an evga supernova 750G2 power supply that has a silent mode that does not run the fan unless it's over a certain temp, but even when the fan is on, it's almost silent as well. The larger lower-rpm fan they use strikes a great balance between silence and performance.

For a video card I went with a Msi 980ti Gaming 6G. Msi's excellent cooler on this card (and many others) is just like the power supply. The fan stays completely off until it gets over a certain temp (during gaming only, basically), and even when it turns on is not loud at all.

I picked up an I7 4790k for future-proofing in gaming. As others have stated, there are significant performance gains in some newer titles that completely warrants the extra cost. For example, in the Witcher 3, an i7 performs much better at times. Example: https://youtu.be/Rutk9ErhKG4
That being said, there's not really any reason to upgrade to anything past that if it's more expensive. The performance gains from any processor past the 4790 are very tiny in gaming. Save the extra money and put it towards something more beneficial, like a better/bigger ssd or gpu.

For a cpu cooler I picked up a noctua dh-15, which is pretty much dead silent and outperforms many aio water cooling solutions. It's a bit pricey but has plenty of overhead room for overclocking on the k-series i7 if I ever decide to go down that road in the future. (no real need to now, at stock it perfectly runs anything you can throw at it currently)

For ram, again some good advice in this thread: Absolutely no need to splurge on the newest ram with the highest speed and lowest Cas ratings. Anything ddr3-1600 and higher will run games essentially the same. If you're not doing intensive video editing or encoding or similar tasks, that money is better spend elsewhere. Again, I'd recommend putting it towards a better ssd or gpu. I found a good deal on 16gb of ddr3-2133 ram (kingston Savage). I'd recommend going for a kit with 2 sticks of ram instead of 4, for both upgradability and performance reasons.

And last part of this quiet build is my first Ssd, a sandisk extreme pro 960gb. These have a 10yr warranty and are not terribly priced (I got mine for ~$300). Dramatic speed difference coming from 5400/7200 rpm WD hdd's to an ssd like this. The long term tests on these sandisk extreme pros are what made me pick them, and the awesome warranty.

Still using Windows 7 for compatibility reasons with my archive of software and input devices. If anything, I may dual-core windows 10 into the mix in the future. Oh yeah, and the mobo I picked is also by MSI. MSI has been on fire lately with their designs and performance.

All-in-all I am extremely happy with the level of silence this build has. It's night and day coming from my old amd rig.

Good luck with the new build!

Always fun to archive this stuff. Here Blue, I setup a spot for you for input on your buying decisions, etc.

My build is still going strong at 3.5 years! Don't run into many problems and games still look great.

This comment was edited on May 11, 2016, 20:34.