Question Does a 4k/silent/small prebuilt under 1.500 USD exist or is that just a hopeless dream?

[NobodyInScandinavia]

Hi people, here's a tricky question: I love PC-gaming, but I absolutely loathe loud rigs, and I love my Macmini for everyday use (it's silent, small, and does everything well except for Steam and PUBG). Is there a prebuilt out there that ships internationally (to Scandinavia) that is both silent (ish), with a nvidia 3080+ GPU (because of Moonlight) within the smallest possible case for under 1.500 USD? Does such a rig even exist? If not how much would such a rig cost? Cheers and merry Christmas all around.

 

[bill001g]

You are going to have to be more clear on what you consider silent. You are never going to get something as powerful as a 3080 that does not have some kind of fan.
If I remember correctly asus had a special 3080 card that was designed to be quite. The only reason I remember it was because it took 4 slots.....not like today where it is common for high end video cards to be that wide.

In addition having a small case it going to make this worse. Those fancy fans on the GPU just dump the heat into the case and you need a case that can get rid of that heat. A larger case can mount more fans which can run slower to reduce the noise.
You also have to get rid of the heat from whatever cpu you get.

There are a number of services that will pretty much put together any list of parts you want for a fee. It is highly unlikely you are going to find something already built.

Although the price has come down the cost of the GPU is easily going to be 1/2 you budget. I would look to assemble it yourself to try to save the fees which tend to be at least a couple hundred dollars.

 

[Karadjgne]

Too many sacrifices. Small, powerful, quiet. For $1500 you'll get 2 out of the 3 and that's it.

Small cases have better airflow properties than larger cases. That's a given with internal volume. It takes @ 15-20 seconds to completely exchange the volume of air in an average mITX case with just 2x 120mm fans, but can take 3-8 minutes to exchange the air in a Super Tower, even with 7x 120mm fans.

Powerful means power use in high amounts and that's going to create heat. With heat you need a lot more cooling. More cooling means fans which will spin according to need, which creates noise. The more cooling potential you have, the lower the fans spin. More cooling takes more space. Which doesn't work well with a small case.

For a 3080, I'd suggest a hybrid. Use a liquid loop with a good radiator and pwm ddc pump/res combo. The cpu can be part of the loop with another rad, or air-cooled or aio, whichever works best.

That'll get you maximum cooling on the gpu, where it's needed most, the rad can be 45x 240mm, so fits most smaller cases. And get decent, quiet fans with plenty of static pressure.

Your only options for small(ish) case with a 3080 is something like a Dell Aurora series, but those are Far from quiet and constantly run very hot and very loud as a result.

 

[Etrius vanRandr]

Hi people, here's a tricky question:

You should take a look at some water cooled rigs. Outside of that Intel has their NUC series. The newer of which can support discrete graphics.

the practical and most likely answer to your question is to just build one yourself since you have a niche requirement that can only be best satisfied by yourself.

The answer that you're probably looking for is no, no such thing exists at least on the pre-built market and not on the price that you specify. Anyone else here is more than welcome to prove me wrong. I don't know of any system integrators that use beQuiet cases.

The truthful answer, again, is that you will most likely have to build one yourself. There are a literal metric buttload of videos on YouTube instructing one how to build their own computer and there are many more videos showing off computers precisely like the kind you want.

Honestly if you just want to post here a bit and figure out exactly what you want need I'm certain that there are people around here including myself would be more than happy to help you pick out components.