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That's huge :)

In a smaller HTPC it can make sense to go passive but for an 8-core desktop workstation I'm not convinced it's worth the trouble. Your PSU and GPU will likely have fans, also with a PCIe SSD it's better to have some airflow.




It's now possible to build very high-performance rigs that run completely silently. Palit offer a fanless 1050ti; Asus Strix 1060/70/80 cards will run with the fans stopped under light loads. Fanless 500w PSUs are readily available, which will happily power an eight core machine with a GTX 1080. The brilliant Silverstone FT03 case uses a chimney-like vertical design that can create significant airflow through pure convection.

Passive cooling isn't for everyone, but the remarkable efficiency of modern components has made it a perfectly feasible option even for high performance workstations. You can choose whatever level of noise you prefer, from extremely quiet to dead silent.


The biggest reduction in computer noise I've noticed over the past ten years has been eliminating HDD chatter by switching to SSDs. I still have one older PC that I use occasionally that has an HDD, and it is pretty serious. You can feel when the filesystem is under load by the frantic vibrations of the arm moving across the disk.

Fans, in comparison, tend to be a steady thrum, and thus fade into the background in a way that HDD chatter doesn't.


I second this. Even without chatter a spinning HDD is quite noticeable while fans are not that noisy as long as you are able to keep them at moderate speeds.


http://fanlesstech.com

This is a good site to keep an eye on if you're interested in fanless computers.




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