- Jan 3, 2015
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So, I've been thinking about possible wacky projects for me to take up in the future after I get my first proper gaming rig done and out of the way with later this year. One of the most popular ideas (voted for by all the imaginary friends in my lonely head) was a completely passive, zero decibel, gaming computer. It would be amazing to get something as interesting as this done, fun to do as well. My first question is, naturally, will this even work?
When I say completely passive, I mean for the PC to have zero fans, zero moving parts, zero pumps - you get the idea. I want a computer that needs no maintenance, no cleaning, and puts out no noise over its lifetime. Of course, I'm not aiming for an enthusiast quad-SLI GTX 980 build, that will smash benchmarks and run 4K at 60 FPS, but a simple gaming build that can be used for silent working and some light gaming.
The first issue I came across was the CPU cooler. It's hard to find completely passive CPU coolers, I found, and any I did find were up at a ridiculous price, over £100 for something that will cool the processor worse than something selling for £20. I guess uniqueness comes with a sacrifice of your budget though. The one I settled for in the end was the £85 Nofan CR-95C, a ring shaped convection powered passive cooler. A few questions: is this a good cooler? More importantly, does it do the job well enough at all? I'm very sceptical about how much cooling a static metal lump can give.
Secondly, the choice of video card soon became a problem, as finding a card that isn't, well, plain bad, is pretty hard. My original plan was going to be an old Radeon HD 5450, but having experienced the awfulness of this card myself (it was my previous graphics card) I searched a bit harder, and managed to find a pretty cool (*badumtiss*) Zotac GTX 750, passively cooled. Does anyone have any experience with Zotac video cards, and are they of good quality? I don't want to spend £110 on a unique version of a card just for it to be an utter failure and burn up in my no airflow case.
I'm pretty sure that I'll stick with a Pentium G3258 for the CPU. I've had experience with this chip before (built a few computers for friends with them) and I know that it's an extremely cool running chip, even when slightly overclocked. It's also particularly cheap and a good match for the GTX 750 I hope to be running.
I've not used solid state drives before, and today I found out that even a quarter of a terabyte is twice as expensive as a normal 1TB hard drive. The two 256GB Crucial MX100 drives I am planning on using take up more of my budget than any other item in the list. I have filled up my 640GB hard drive in 5-6 years of usage, so how would this SSD-only solution fare in terms of storage. Doubling the amount of storage and price just to get 1TB of storage seems to be a big, big sacrifice. What are your opinions on it, and especially how do these SSDs perform?
Finding a suitable power supply was very hard. I decided to stick with Nofan because they seem to be leading the market of passive solutions right now, but the smallest wattage power supply I could find was only the 500W P-500A. It's very expensive, at over £120, but I guess it is semi modular and has 80+ Gold efficiency. It has no fan, of course, but supplies a continuous wattage of 500W, way too much for my estimated sub-200W system. Will this low power load decrease the efficiency of the power supply and therefore make it heat up too much?
The case was my final issue. I picked the Cooler Master N200 because of previous experience with it on other builds, and it's well placed (especially for this build) top fan mount. Obviously, I will be removing all case fans and using the case fanless, but will the empty fan mount above the CPU cooler be enough to allow the hot air to rise out via convection? I feel that, due to the way normal motherboards are mounted, the heat from the graphics card will rise into the processor heatsink, and cause that to overheat. With nothing to pull heat out of the case, or push air into the case, I feel like something is bound to go wrong somewhere along the line.
Oh, I almost forgot. Here is the build as it stands right now: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Woody1999/saved/XfLqqs
Any recommendations on components picked? Any changes that could improve the build? I have no clue about what my budget will be in the future when I make this build, but keeping it under £700 would be nice. I am very excited about how this could turn out, if it will ever go through.
Thanks in advance!
Woody
When I say completely passive, I mean for the PC to have zero fans, zero moving parts, zero pumps - you get the idea. I want a computer that needs no maintenance, no cleaning, and puts out no noise over its lifetime. Of course, I'm not aiming for an enthusiast quad-SLI GTX 980 build, that will smash benchmarks and run 4K at 60 FPS, but a simple gaming build that can be used for silent working and some light gaming.
The first issue I came across was the CPU cooler. It's hard to find completely passive CPU coolers, I found, and any I did find were up at a ridiculous price, over £100 for something that will cool the processor worse than something selling for £20. I guess uniqueness comes with a sacrifice of your budget though. The one I settled for in the end was the £85 Nofan CR-95C, a ring shaped convection powered passive cooler. A few questions: is this a good cooler? More importantly, does it do the job well enough at all? I'm very sceptical about how much cooling a static metal lump can give.
Secondly, the choice of video card soon became a problem, as finding a card that isn't, well, plain bad, is pretty hard. My original plan was going to be an old Radeon HD 5450, but having experienced the awfulness of this card myself (it was my previous graphics card) I searched a bit harder, and managed to find a pretty cool (*badumtiss*) Zotac GTX 750, passively cooled. Does anyone have any experience with Zotac video cards, and are they of good quality? I don't want to spend £110 on a unique version of a card just for it to be an utter failure and burn up in my no airflow case.
I'm pretty sure that I'll stick with a Pentium G3258 for the CPU. I've had experience with this chip before (built a few computers for friends with them) and I know that it's an extremely cool running chip, even when slightly overclocked. It's also particularly cheap and a good match for the GTX 750 I hope to be running.
I've not used solid state drives before, and today I found out that even a quarter of a terabyte is twice as expensive as a normal 1TB hard drive. The two 256GB Crucial MX100 drives I am planning on using take up more of my budget than any other item in the list. I have filled up my 640GB hard drive in 5-6 years of usage, so how would this SSD-only solution fare in terms of storage. Doubling the amount of storage and price just to get 1TB of storage seems to be a big, big sacrifice. What are your opinions on it, and especially how do these SSDs perform?
Finding a suitable power supply was very hard. I decided to stick with Nofan because they seem to be leading the market of passive solutions right now, but the smallest wattage power supply I could find was only the 500W P-500A. It's very expensive, at over £120, but I guess it is semi modular and has 80+ Gold efficiency. It has no fan, of course, but supplies a continuous wattage of 500W, way too much for my estimated sub-200W system. Will this low power load decrease the efficiency of the power supply and therefore make it heat up too much?
The case was my final issue. I picked the Cooler Master N200 because of previous experience with it on other builds, and it's well placed (especially for this build) top fan mount. Obviously, I will be removing all case fans and using the case fanless, but will the empty fan mount above the CPU cooler be enough to allow the hot air to rise out via convection? I feel that, due to the way normal motherboards are mounted, the heat from the graphics card will rise into the processor heatsink, and cause that to overheat. With nothing to pull heat out of the case, or push air into the case, I feel like something is bound to go wrong somewhere along the line.
Oh, I almost forgot. Here is the build as it stands right now: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Woody1999/saved/XfLqqs
Any recommendations on components picked? Any changes that could improve the build? I have no clue about what my budget will be in the future when I make this build, but keeping it under £700 would be nice. I am very excited about how this could turn out, if it will ever go through.
Thanks in advance!
Woody
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