PC Tech Thread

Noob question: how do I determine what framerate Flash streams are playing at? Some fast camera movement looks jerky and this might be the problem?

@hippy if you can justify all those things then go for it, it a gonna be a fantastic pc to use and will last ages. SSD is the single best upgrade you can buy for a pc and stays with the silent theme which is good.
I haven't looked at the case or site you're using but I think the fanless requirement is holding you back, if you feel like making a tiny compromise down the road, I'm pretty sure you can buy closed loop water cooled gpus. Would be quiet, but not silent, easy to set up (come with coolant/hoses etc all hooked up) and satisfy the underlying pc geek.

The machine sits in the corner of my lounge and although I'm used to a loud fan (actually collection of fans) now, I'd love a silent machine.

Also performance-wise, it has to kill what I have now (not hard) and I'm future-proofing it somewhat. I started out with the overclockable 3.5 and then thought 'fuck it, this is a work machine and the faster I spec it, the longer it'll keep me happy' so I threw the 4 at it.

I never said it had to be cheap, I was merely questioning the combination of parts as I've been out of the game for ages now.

not having ... enough RAM

Get 32GB, it's a small addition but will make a big difference, especially if you want to run some VMs on the machine (I have a separate VMWare ESXi box at home for that).

I'm off to build something faster... wikihow.com/Build-a-Supercomp­uter

Got a supercomputer (of sorts), two old RLX 300ex blade servers, 24 blades each. A total of 48 x PIII 700MHz CPUs (old but 33.6GHz in total), 96GB RAM total, 7.7TB disk space total.

Can only turn it on when everyone is out as it is SO FUCKING LOUD.

Yeah, I see that, but I literally specced that up while talking to another dev on the phone about my 32-bit laptop and how it wouldn't run Zwift and maybe I should be upgrading my desktop because the shitty gfx is annoying me and something on it is not letting me use Garmin Express and it's slow running WKO and VisualStupido blah blah. It was me getting excited about having a new speedy box. A while back I was just going to throw money at a HP workstation because that's what I use elsewhere and it just works. Then I saw this Quiet PC thing and thought - game on! The video card choice was simply because I don't know any of the other brands. I guess Aus had different companies prevalant in the PC world 10 years ago.

I originally specced. up their more expensive box because it looked nicer :) But then I saw the USB ports on the top of the ugly one and went 'oooh easy Powertap downloads'. #cashedup #fickle

I have SSD in the current machine but I also have a 1TB data drive. Good point about SSD - maybe I should spec. a second SSD for the data drive to remove another moving part.

One of the guys here has a killer water-cooled rig but I wanted less complexity. And with water-cooled you still lose the 'silent'.

http://www.pcgamer.com/closed-loop-liquid-cooler-roundup-8-coolers-reviewed/

but...

http://lifehacker.com/its-been-a-fun-ride-but-im-done-water-cooling-my-pc-1689683422 :)

http://www.nofancomputer.com/eng/products/CS-80.php

All those vents aren't going to help much.

You'd be better with a Fractal Define R5 or Antec P180-series, with a couple of large slow fans. These are both heavy-built cases with internal sounds damping and limited noise paths. You should aim to have a single clear airpath from bottom/front to top/rear, with no shortcuts for cold air to leave early or enter late. Have more intake airflow than exhaust to limit dust and fluff.

5 pages of R5-based build guide:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Quiet_ATX_Gamer_R5_Version

Yeah, could bump it though I tend not to bother with VMs so huge RAM wasn't exactly up there on the list but I guess if I stick with my future-proof idea I could stick 32 in it now and worry about upgrading later.

Sorry, totally pissed in your chips.
If you fancy a pretty case... this isnt the build I wanted to find but might suit you (obvs dont need to worry about OS X side of things, w10 will just work).
http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/160046-success-suphak-audio-desk-ga-h97-hd3-4790k-hd4600-wifi-atx.html

couple of large slow fans

No fans.

If the case wasn't effective, they'd have a lot of returns, no?

Also bare in mind I dont really know what I am talking about @hippy #macuser

Save the £100, a GT730 will be worse than recent onboard. It's an 18 month old entry level card. It'd make sense if you had an ultra low power cpu but you've got a beast of a processor with decent onboard graphics.
Save the £100.

Or spend more and get something quiet and fast - something like an Asus 970 GTX STRIX which looks like it's pretty much silent
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=67919

I'd be interested to measure my machine's db and compare it to the one in your spec. It's hard for me to visualize auralize? the volume difference. Silent is silent though, right? :)

The case I originally picked was a black version of that one. Looks nice but they spec. it with different mobo and it's another £250 or something and I love the idea of the extra USB ports up the top.

I knew that already :P

Their only GPU options with this case are a bunch of stuff I've never heard of...

Motherboard video only (Intel HD 530 graphics / triple display out)- £53.32
Sapphire AMD R5 230 FLEX Fanless 1GB GDDR3 PCI-E HDMI Low Profile ? - £10.43
Palit Geforce Fanless GT730 2GB GDDR3 Graphics Card ? - £5.93
Asus Geforce Fanless GT730 2GB GDDR3 Graphics Card ? [Due in 2 days]
PNY NVIDIA Quadro NVS 300 x16 Dual DVI / VGA Low Profile Video Card ? + £50.38
Palit Geforce GTX 750 Ti Kalmx Silent 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card ? + £55.69
PNY NVIDIA Quadro K600 1GB GDDR3 Low Profile Video Card ? + £96.23
PNY NVIDIA NVS 510 Quad DisplayPort UHD 4K Graphics Card

that's why I just threw in the Asus. I guess I could buy it without the gfx and add it myself if their options are all shit.

that's why I just threw in the Asus. I guess I could buy it without the gfx and add it myself if their options are all shit.

If the 970 will fit then do that. If it only spins the fans when it's working - i.e. playing games - when you'll probably have headphones or speakers at the same time, then it's basically silent for all/most intents and purposes.

Entry level fanless will be a waste of time given you have decent onboard.

That case is so nice, you should get it regardless of money. As @duncs said, claw the money back by using onboard graphics rather than the GPU's they offer.
I might post a photo of my PC build once I have OS X running perfectly, you'll shit bricks. Non modular PSU in a the smallest Micro ATX case I could find? Lolz. Airflow? Lolz. It's actually pretty quiet though to be fair.

Using the sexy case A490s, this lot adds up to £1,871.18

Machine name Nofan A490S Silent PC
Compatible Operating Systems Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10
Power supply 500W Fanless PSU
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI
Onboard Graphics Intel HD 530
Graphics ports DVI-D, HDMI and VGA (up to 3 ports simultaneously)
Max resolution DVI-D / VGA 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Max resolution HDMI 4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz
Maximum shared graphics memory 512 MB
NVIDIA 2-Way SLI Support Yes
AMD 2/3-Way CrossFire Support Yes
Supported RAM DDR4 2133 MHz memory modules
Memory slots 4 (max 64 GB)
SATA 6Gb ports 6 (SATA 6Gb compatible)
SATA RAID Support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10
M.2 PCIe connectors 2
LAN Intel GbE LAN chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
USB 3.1 Type C ports 1 with USB 3.1 support
USB 3.1 ports 1 on rear panel
USB 3.0/2.0 ports 7 (4 internal / 3 rear panel)
USB 2.0/1.1 ports 6 (4 internal / 2 rear panel)
Audio HD 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel with 6 x audio jacks and SP/DIF Out
RS232 serial port header Yes
Other rear panel port PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
PCI Express x16 / x8 / x4 / x1 / PCI 2.0 slots 1 / 1 / 1 / 2 / 2
PCI Express version All PCIe ports conform to PCIe 3.0
Motherboard Dimensions ATX form factor (30.5 x 21.4 cm)
PC dimensions (W x D x H) 200 x 490 x 470 mm
Clean Build™ promise OS+updates, drivers and MS Security Essentials only
Recovery method Windows installation and drivers DVDs supplied
Warranty type Collect and return, open-case policy
Warranty 24 months

Contractor you said? Flat rate VAT?

(and that spec above didn't show any of the options you'd picked)

Do you need a Blu Ray or DVD writer? Do people use those anymore?

Oh yeah, if you are a contractor on flat rate, get it over 2k and reclaim the VAT, be cheaper than paying less... but I am sure you knew that...

Okay, so I'll have my old netbook running plex, hardwired to the router, serving files to my PS3+TV. It'll also work as a torrent box...

Next question - can anyone recommend a decent USB HDD enclosure with room for two HDDs in it?

edit: and a good, low power 3TB HDD?

Most gamers buying cases like that one won't have a low enough noise floor to tell. It's up to you, but that build guide should have noise measurements you can use to objectively compare. The site might also have a review for the CS80, I haven't checked yet.

I burn music CDs for my CDJs and figure since I finally bought a bluray player for home, having bluray capability in my PC would be a nice-to-have. It's one of those things where it will sit unused for most of the machine's life but I bet there will be an instance during its life where I'd pay a lot more than the initial cost for a solution if it was missing.