Silent, But Deadly: Build Your Own Gaming-Ready 0 dB PC

How-to
By Igor Wallossek
published

For many folks, the most beautiful sound that a PC can make is no sound at all. How close can Tom's Hardware get to a zero-decibel configuration and still lend up with a compact, functional machine capable of mainstream gaming, without breaking the bank?

CrossFire: A10-5700 And Radeon HD 6670

Dual GPU: Performance Boost or Nonsense?

Even without the complexities of micro-stuttering, missing CrossFire profiles, and driver issues, we really don’t think that CrossFire makes much sense in this kind of build. Nevertheless, we gave it a shot anyway, if only to be thorough.

AMD recommends pairing our A10 up with a Radeon HD 6670 or 6570, so our passively-cooled HIS Radeon HD 6670 iSilence 5 was an ideal candidate.

In order to use the APU and a discrete graphics card in CrossFire, you have to enable the feature in your motherboard's UEFI. After booting back into Windows, CrossFire is good to go.

Graphics Benchmarks

Naturally, we weren't able to include the Intel-based systems in our CrossFire benchmarks, so the A10-5700 APU is all that’s left.

Bottom Line So Far

AMD's A10-5700 APU and Radeon HD 6670 in CrossFire are slower than a Radeon HD 7750, while using more power. The only reason to even consider such a setup would be to more completely utilize old hardware you already own. So much for that little experiment.

Igor Wallossek
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136 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ASHISH65
    great article !!!
    Reply
  • azathoth
    I was disappointed there wasn't actual stress test temperature results of the APU for the passive cooling solution.

    But otherwise it's a neat article, personally I would sacrifice dead silence to use a cheaper HDD and perhaps more of those silent fans if I were to build one myself.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    Great article! Much more DIY than the usual articles on Toms.
    Much appreciated.
    Reply
  • _Pez_
    Great PC !, but if it was mine I would be scared... "no fan noise .. is it burning?"
    Reply
  • Nintendo Maniac 64
    As someone that also uses a semi-passive PC (fan only turns on when needed), I'm disappointed that you guys left out a few big things:

    1. undervolting the CPU and GPU

    2. underclocking and farther undervolting the GPU for 2D mode

    3. hybrid cooling setup for GPUs where the fan only turns on at a high temperature (may require GPU BIOS editing depending on GPU model)

    OPTIONAL (due to risk): removal of CPU IHS
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    no love for sapphire's passive ultimate HD 7770?
    Reply
  • Madn3ss795
    Pentium G2120 + Sapphire Ultimate HD7750 would have been a better choice. And you can pay extra for a low-power Core i5 instead since it's not that expensive compared to the rest of this build.
    Reply
  • ivyanev
    When i hear gaming from the TH I really expect to see something in the realm of 500$ SBM machine or at least something close. What I see here is realy nice office pc.
    Reply
  • Nintendo Maniac 64
    10589934 said:
    When i hear gaming from the TH I really expect to see something in the realm of 500$ SBM machine or at least something close. What I see here is realy nice office pc.
    The main issue is the GPU, and that would require a hybrid passive-active cooling solution much like was done for the CPU, but for some reason they didn't even try such a thing...
    Reply
  • twelve25
    I wonder about an i5 or i7 S or T model and crossfire 7750's. You might need a bigger case and a longer motherboard that allows gaps between cards.

    Reply