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Want to build quiet home office PC

S

shadrach103

Junior Member
I'm looking to build a desktop PC for a very specific use-case which should be pretty easy to piece together. I have built many custom PCs in my life and am in IT by trade, but I haven't bothered with a PC build in a number of years. So although I'm 100% comfortable building a PC I'm a bit behind in recent technology (chipsets, mini-ITX, water cooling, silent fans, etc).

My current laptop is decent for what I do but for a few reasons I would like to build a SFF, quiet PC to replace it. I'm using a Lenovo T410 with an i5 Dual-Core Mobile CPU and a 120GB SSD hooked up to a pair of monitors. This is for my home office and I do not game on this at all. With the addition of the SSD this thing is very quiet. I will run video conferences daily on this though which will typically run the CPU to ~50% (using a Logitech camera with H.264 encoding offloaded) and the laptop fans usually runs at full speed during.

I want to use an Intel Quad Core with integrated HD Graphics which support H.264 decoding (no AMD). The rest of my needs are basic: running the entire Office suite, multiple RDP sessions, sometimes Spotify playing, and various IE/Chrome windows open. The majority of apps are single-threaded but the video conferencing requirements will utilize a quad-core for higher resolution encoding, which is ideal.

The most important requirement is for the system to be no louder than my current laptop, which is whisper quiet except when under load and the fan speeds up. I don't need a ton of extra horsepower, but stuff like the new Google Maps really do crawl now.

Budget is not too important, there is no need to buy bargain parts, but I also do not need top of the line either. Live in US and would prefer to buy everything from NewEgg. Preferred brands are Intel, Seagate, Asus/Gigabyte, and G.Skill. Coming from a laptop I won't reuse any parts, but I may drop in the SATA II SSD as a second (data) HD. Zero desire to overclock. Most support dual 1920x1080 monitors with HDMI or DVI-D inputs. I do not need any software and am looking to build it this month.

But this is where I need assistance, I'm not sure if my requirements are realistic: to get an i5 or i7 (preferably Ivy Bridge) quad core system which will run quieter than my current -5 Duo Mobile does. The power requirements of the M architecture is less than half, but maybe a couple low speed, quiet 80mm fans will do what I need? Or would a mITX platform run cooler inherently than mATX?
 
Forgot a few thing. if Haswell will run cooler than Ivy Bridge than I'm fine going with that latest platform, but from my reading I think Ivy Bridge will be more than enough.

Also I'm not in love with that Silverstone case per-say, so if anyone know of quieter cases I'm open to other suggestions. Here are my dimension limitations, based on two different spots I could place the PC in my custom desk.

HTPC Shelf: 21"W x 6"H x 15"D
Square Shelf: 12"W x 12"H x 15"D
 
Can't you put a tower case on the floor?

Almost any PSU with Gold-rated efficiency will be dead quiet.
 
I put my Computer on the floor next to my TV.
It looks like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042
This case only has USB 2 on the front. There are newer versions that cost more. This case is rather Substantially built. (Like a tank). No one really needs a large case like this full ATX case but sometimes the ATX motherboards are just cheaper.

I just purchased one of these cases and I like it too. However, I have not built a computer for it yet.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119286
It will fit in a 12 X 12 hole but it is about 15" Deep with a power supply.

I don't advise putting any computer in a cabinet because there is not enough air flow. You need to get rid of the Hot air. I put my XBOX360 under my desk on a shelf, but the heat comes out the top. It always runs a little hot. I also cut several big holes in the back of my desk shelf area. Without a fan it did not do much good.
 
Business-class OEM desktops are engineered to be super quiet. You're unlikely to hear an SFF Optiplex for example. For your uses, that may be a better bet than building your own. For example, the Dell Outlet has an Optiplex 3010 with an Ivy Bridge quad, 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 Pro, and a Radeon 7470 w/ DP/DVI for $479. You could certainly build a PC with the same specs for cheaper, but you're not going to get a better engineered case for that price.
 
On top of what's been said, if you end up using IGP, rather than a video card, get Haswell. It does a better job at handling monitors with bad EDIDs, and the driver's configuration applet actually works every time. With IB and older, it will often--not always--have blank menus unless you make a profile, but then you have to swap to that profile manually, which is no help if the profile was needed to support a given monitor. Haswell's config utility just works, like AMD's and nVidia's do. No problem with an add-on card, like mfenn's Optiplex has. But, if you still go the route of building, Haswell's IGP will do the job, and well, with basically any displays.
 
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