How To Build A Silent PC

Have you ever played on a blisteringly loud computer? It can be really immersion-breaking when your fans drown out the sound effects and music coming out of your speakers. Whether you're building a PC from scratch or would like to make modifications to your existing rig, it's important to keep your computer's acoustics in check.

With that said, we're going to show you how you can build a nearly silent gaming PC in a few simple steps.

Table of Contents

• Get a high-quality CPU cooler
• Use high-quality thermal paste
• Get additional fans and maintain good neutral airflow
• Get a quiet or fanless PSU
• Get a quiet graphics card
• Skip the hard drive and stick with an SSD
• Get a sound-dampening case
• Use good cable management

CPUs can generate a lot of heat, especially if they're overclocked. If you aren't using a high-quality cooler, your CPU fan can be one of the loudest parts of your rig. Some premium air coolers include the Noctua NH-D14 or Be Quiet!'s Dark Rock Pro 3. For a step-up in cooling, however, we recommend going with a water cooler. Take for instance the Kraken X62, which is an excellent closed-loop solution. NZXT's cooler uses two 140mm fans coupled with a 280mm radiator. Just be sure that your chassis supports 140mm fans and has enough clearance for your radiator.

In general, we recommend going with a CPU cooler that uses 140mm fans as opposed to 120mm ones. The larger fans will be able to move more air at lower RPMs--this makes them quieter.

If you really want to go the extra mile, you can opt for high-end custom loop coolers. EKWB, for instance, sells excellent pumps and radiators. They are much harder to install, however, and can leak if you don't know what you're doing.

While the thermal compound that comes pre-applied to most CPU coolers isn't bad, to absolutely ensure your thermals are in check, you should apply premium thermal paste--just make sure you clean off the stock stuff with isopropyl alcohol first.

Noctua's NH-H1 ceramic paste, for instance, is excellent and is known to outperform other high-end compounds by five degrees Celsius.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you want your rig to make less noise, you should install as many fans as you can into your case. If you have more fans, they won't have to spin as fast to stay cool.

For a silent build, we recommend low-noise fans such as Be Quiet!'s Silent Wings 3 or Noctua's NF-A14 140mm solutions (Again, make sure your case supports 140mm fans). Once you have the fans, you'll want to set them up so that you have neutral airflow. This means you should ideally have as many intake fans as you have exhaust fans. This will ensure that you'll always have a steady stream of cool air coming into your case. You'll want to make sure that you set up your PC so that the fans assist each other and don't compete. Popular fan arrangements will have intake fans at the front and have exhaust fans either at the back or at the top of the case (heat does rise, after all).

Power supplies generally aren't the loudest components, but they can generate a distracting hum. You can circumvent this by getting a PSU that has a fan that only spins when your system heats up. Just make sure to mount the PSU fan facing up, unless you have a case with a vent at the bottom, as power supplies use intake fans.

There are passively cooled power supplies like Seasonic's Platinum 520 or Silverstone's NJ520, which are completely silent.

Besides the CPU, graphics cards are usually the loudest component of any gaming rig. The key to getting a quiet video card is to get one with a power-efficient GPU. Nvidia's 10-series graphics cards with their Pascal architecture are generally good in this regard. To take it a step further, aftermarket variants often offer more fans and larger heat sinks to keep thermals in check. The fans on Zotac's AMP Extreme GTX 1080 Ti won't turn on until the card hits around 60 degrees Celsius, for instance.

For an extra quiet option, companies like Corsair and MSI also sell water-cooled GPUs that come with a fan and radiator.

Hard drives aren't consistently loud, but their whirring sounds can be pretty annoying when they're fetching data. This is because HDDs use rigid metal platters that have to spin very fast. You can circumvent this issue altogether by simply going with a solid-state drive setup. While SSDs are much more costly than HDDs, they have no moving parts and are therefore completely silent.

While you may have sorted out the quietest components, to really seal the deal (and the noise), you'll want to use a sound-dampening case. Chassis like Be Quiet!'s Darkbase Pro 900 or NZXT's H440 use a bunch of thick closed-cell sound dampening material that mitigates noise bleeding. These cases may cost a bit more, but they're worth it if you really want a quiet setup.

Good cable management ensures that your rig will get optimal airflow. Make sure you're properly routing all your cables behind your case cutouts and using zip ties or Velcro straps to strap them down. Many cases will also allow you to remove unused hard drive cages, which will open up a little more airflow.