Have been chatting to a friend about building or buying a really quiet but powerful PC. The obvious came up - how do apple make their 18 core mac pros so quiet and why haven’t specialist Audio PC manufacturers used a similar design?
Is it that the mac pros don’t overclock? Perhaps the superior case design that, whilst quiet, means you can’t do any upgrades and PC users want to be able to upgrade?
And what about the imac pros? They’re even smaller than the trashcans. How ??? :headbang:
Think the two sources of noise in a PC are fans and HDDs, a silent PC should use a liquid cooling system and SDDs as main storage. There are silent fans solutions out there but dunno how quiet they are.
Hi again Mozart
That is due to a patented fan design.
More info here. https://www.cultofmac.com/267222/how-the-imac-cooling-fan-stays-so-silent/
And then they have pretty large heatsinks on their CPU’s and RAM.
But again, it’s all about what kind of fan you are using. My workstation is a Dell T3500 with an X5687 processor. The processor is passively cooled by two fans on the chassis. And they are dead silent.
Cooling pumps make noise due to their small diameter impeller and speed. I would suggest a big air cooled CPU cooler with a big fan at low speed (= lots of air at low noise level), for a graphics card, either completely passively cooled or one which only uses it fans when needed (which is hardly the case with DAW applications).
A good computer noise isolated computer case helps as well, eg. Fractal Design R6, Define R6 — Fractal Design
Example of a good air cooled cpu-cooler https://noctua.at/en/products/cpu-cooler-retail/nh-d15
I have a fully air cooled setup running at 15°C over ambient temperatures, with GPU and case fans running only when needed.
Good luck with building / buying your system.
Hi again 
That’s interesting. Thanks. Clever design!
I use the following and you can hardly notice it’s there. The very first time I switched it on I thought it wouldn’t start because I couldn’t hear anything and had to check the processor fan rotating to see it was actually starting up? 
Corsair HX850 (semi passive cooling)
Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH Edition (2 large 120mm fans)
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 (semi passive cooling)
Fully SSD drives. (Only external conventional sata drives to backup and archive audio)
I’ve considered water cooling but that’s only interesting if you want to overclock to the limit and that also needs fans to cool? And these can be even more noisy than a good air cooler?
I run my i9 7900 processor at 4.3 MHZ (stock speed is 3.3 MHZ) and just hear it a little when it’s very hot. Like close to 30c or above. besides that it’s almost dead silent.
Hope this helps?
Hi,
i ve been building pcs for many years. The most important thing for me is noise !
My way is the following:
overclock your cpu for about max 20-30 percent
my cpu is 8700k oc to 4700 all cores
then undervolt the cpu so long as you got a stable prime95
i use the noctua nd-d15 for many years (before nh 14d)
use the y-cable to get 7v or use your own cooler control
fan should be max 900 rotation
my pc is almost quiet - 32db - independent on load
temps are max 65 on load
Thanks Pate pro for the temps and SPL data. Unfortunately my SPL meter doesn’t go down low enough for me to measure the PC noise.
I’ve got an i7 3930k overclocked to 4.2 all cores, with a thermalright archon SB-E X2 cooler with two Ty141 fans. It’s housed in a define r2 xl with three stock case fans. At the moment the case fans are running with the fan switch at 7volts
With a cubase project running at 75% asio, I get average core temps of 55-60c and the room temperature is currently about 20-21c
It was built by Scan back in 2013 and has been pretty much rock solid… The back case fan is starting to have bearing noise but the front two are still quiet.
I am about to replace the last remaining spinning disk in there with an SSD.
All this being said, I had heard that even an 18 core mac pro runs without it’s fans going and thus completely quiet for a majority of it’s time (dunno about under load though) and was wondering how they achieved that. Vital few provided some clue above and also, Pete Kaine of scan provided some answers on another forum.
Thanks to all for answers. Very interesting reading!
My setup is very quiet, obviously not 100% silent but barely audible. I’ve set the Q fan control to ‘Silent’ in the BIOS.
See my specs below.
My computer is in a Fractal Define R6 case, M.2 drive as system, a big heat sink for CPU, two conventional HDDs in Silentmaxx HDD Silencer cases. The ladder don’t really fit into the case, build a DIY solution to iso-mount them. Super quiet system, barely audible. As my graphic needs are modest, I’ve chosen a passive graphics card but there are many fan-cooled ones out there that are very quiet with standard load. The already very quiet external HDD I’ve connected for backups is the loudest part of it
i7-7820 x on an Asus Prime X299-A, running @ 4,5 GHz permanently.
Thanks. Can I ask how many monitors you can run with your card? I’ve been looking for a quiet / passive card that can run three monitors…
Sounds like a great system!
It is. Has no heat problems at all though I disconnected the rear fan of the case, that just came to my mind… it wasn’t loud but I did want it to be silent.
It has no heat (and therefore fan noise) problems probably because the CPU is idling on 30% when my ASIO load of a project is near red
Don’t want the possible noise but I’d be happy if a future Cubase could somehow improve that ratio!
That annoying moment when you finish your silent new build and hear a hum… The joy when you realise it’s that quiet you’ve notice a hum from a synths PSU never noticed before. The “Wait, What! that’s not coming from the PC, where’s that coming from?” A quick swap of the brick and we’re all good. At first i thought it was the speaker monitors. It really is that quiet.
My new build has 4 fans in it. 1 in the BeQuiet PSU, 2 tower and 1 CPU… Noctua. I run dual monitors off the i7’s integrated graphics, no need for the extra card, we’re not gaming. It’s silent, I can’t hear them spin, you will at full load but I’m yet to have a project to get anywhere near that.
The 2 in the tower are tiny, purely because of the flat bed design, these draw heat away from the VRM sink, above the I/O panel, a very important twist in design, the flat bed has the I/O recessed and the fans sit perfectly to match the motherboards extra heat sink.
I run two Benq GL2450 monitors, 'haven’t tried running three.
Cheers.
Got a passive cooled 2GB ZOTAC GeForce GT 730 Passiv PCIe 2.0, that runs 3 monitors on 3 different outputs (HDMI, VGA, DVI). Two monitors are 28" standard Samsung, the third is another Samsung 28" 4k.
I’ve just noticed that you’ve got a Carillon Case. I’d forgotten all about them. I remember them when they were tied to Turnkey in London but once that went under I thought Carillon went with them. Nice to be reminded. A company for the list!
Thanks that looks like a good card. What sort of resolution are you running those monitors at?
Thanks