Quiet, powerful, prosumer and 1080p gaming <$800

A silent build is not easy to do at your budget. A build like this will be relatively quiet most of the time. It can play games at high settings at 1080P. You'll need to add more storage later on. Buying this all from NCIX will push the price to $1000.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/T6dVsY

Silent is definitely doable at any budget in my opinion, you just have to choose the parts carefully. On my phone now but I'll suggest a build when I can get to my laptop

When trying to create a quiet build, remember that your system is only as quiet as its loudest component. A completely silent PC with 1 noisy component is a noisy PC so you just have to choose the parts carefully. The parts that make noise are:

- Mechanical hard drives. The motors spinning the hard disk make noise and this movement can create vibrations throughout the case. Vibrations are by far the most annoying noise in PC's in my opinion so I tend to avoid hard drives completely. If you must go for one then laptop drives running at 5400RPM are quietest. So long as you boot from a SSD, you shouldn't notice the reduced speed. If you do get a hard drive, make sure you use rubber mounts as this will reduce vibrations.

- Fans. The motors in fans will make a high pitched noise when they are spinning quickly so larger fans spinning more slowly are generally quieter. However the movement of air makes noise in itself so huge fans aren't necessarily silent. I tend to find that good quality 120/140mm fans running below around 800RPM are very quiet. It is best in my opinion to use PWM (4 pin) fans that range in speed depending on temperature and can go down as low as 300-600RPM

- Air turbulence. Having fans very close together and blowing in even slightly different directions can make annoying noises too, this generally isn't a problem in tower cases, just in very compact/slim ITX cases.



Best way to reduce hard drive noise is to not use hard drives, simple as that really. With air turbulence, just use a tower case and it shouldn't be a problem. Regarding fans, just make sure every fan in your system changes speed based on temperature and has a lower limit that is as low as possible.

Another way to reduce noise is to reduce the amount of heat created in the first place. The amount of heat created is directly proportional to the amount of power that it consumes, for example a 135W CPU will run much hotter than a 65W CPU. More efficient power supplies generate much less heat as well, for example if you're consuming 200W with 80% efficiency, you will generate 40W of heat, the same PSU running at 90% will create 20W of heat so it would be much cooler so won't need high fan speeds to stay cool. That doesn't necessarily mean to say it will have a quiet fan but it is a good rule of thumb.

Also heatsinks cool your components and don't make any noise so the larger the heatsink on your CPU/GPU, the less airflow it will need to stay cool in general.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core OEM/Tray Processor ($189.49 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9S 46.4 CFM CPU Cooler ($56.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus B150M-K Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($74.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: GeIL EVO POTENZA 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($86.75 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair RMx 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $758.08
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-07 15:07 EST-0500


Something like that should be very quiet, the GPU is very efficient, has big heatsinks and fans that go down to 0RPM. The PSU is gold rated and goes down to 0RPM and the CPU cooler is overkill for a 65W CPU and has a very quiet fan that goes down to 300RPM. You could probably take the case fan out completely and just go with what's in the system there and it would be inaudible so long as you don't get unlucky and get any coil whine.

You're welcome. The large case is great for cooling, but remove the upper hard drive cage so the fan will blow directly toward the GPU.

That build is going to be as quiet as a mouse peeing on cotton!