Com-Central.net

March 16, 2006
Build a Quiet Gaming System
By Loyd Case

Killer gaming rigs are one thing, but we're getting a little weary of the noise a lot of these high-end systems make. So we set out to build a high-performance, but quiet, gaming system. Before we dive into particulars, let's take a look at the goals we set out here.

* We didn't set out to build an utterly silent system. There are almost always trade-offs to completely quiet systems. Either performance suffers or you end up with something bulky and large, that can vaguely resemble a giant radiator.
* Performance and low noise were equally weighted. We wanted to achieve noise reduction without sacrificing performance. By the same token, we didn't want to include a performance feature if it substantially increased noise output.
* The system needed to look like a normal system, using a case that we liked.
* The system just had to work. That's to say, we didn't want to have to futz around with dialing in just the right fan speed or worry about manually doing anything to keep the noise down. This was a gaming rig, or alternatively, something that could be used for other high-performance applications.
* It had to be tweakable. In other words, if we wanted to overclock, we should have the ability to do that without having to go back and re-engineer parts of the case. So the system had to have some headroom.
* It had to be easily transportable. It didn't need to be a small-form-factor system but, by the same token, external liquid cooling solutions weren't the answer. Hey, we wanted to be able to lug it to a LAN party once and a while.
* The hardware itself had to be pretty bleeding-edge. It's easy to build a quiet system that's an average performer. But as we know, high-end hardware can run pretty hot these days.
* The system had to be a useful test bed. That's a feature unique to what we do here; most people don't have to worry about swapping hardware in and out frequently.

With these goals in mind, let's take a deeper look...