How to Build a Quiet Custom Gaming PC

Computer components produce heat. We all intuitively know this, whether from feeling our phones after playing a game or showing someone a video, touching the bottom of our laptops after watching a movie, or noticing the air coming out of our desktops. The more we push our components, the more electrons are running around in the wiring, and the more heat they produce. This is obvious as we all can hear the fans in our custom gaming PC spin up as we play games or watch movies (or gasp, use Google Maps on Chrome!).

You may be surprised to learn that watt for watt, computers produce the same amount of heat as space heaters. However, those that have studied physics should note that energy must be conserved, and in a computer the electricity is not used to convert to any other type of energy and thus it is converted to heat. The light energy is absorbed by surfaces and turns into heat, as does sound, and the kinetic energy from the fans.

Speaking of sound and fans, there’s a lot of effort that goes into keeping our PCs cool. High temperatures will damage sensitive (and expensive) components in a custom gaming computer, so fans work to bring in cool air and keep hot air out. This makes a lot of noise especially during a long and intense gaming session.

This is not ideal for those that like quiet, or have roommates, or are trying to stream their gameplay to twitch. No one wants to hear your computer fans drone on and on. There are a few solutions to this noise problem that people use to build custom quiet gaming computers.

One of the most popular is to use liquid cooling. This uses pump, tubing, radiator and coolant to extract heat from your CPU (and/or other components) and is similar to the cooling system in your car and air conditioner. 

Another option is to use quiet fans that are designed to operate without producing much noise. Obviously they are not cheap, and can sometimes be quite large as they may spin slower but still need to move a volume of air. Currently Noctua is the best known provider of quiet fans.

The best method is to combine the abovementioned tactics into a dampened computer case. These cases use different materials to contain the noise inside of the computer. The exterior of the case is usually build out of something like steel and may be a unibody construction to keep noise from escaping. Foam padding may absorb sound, like what you may see in a music studio. Lastly, filtered and hidden fans draw and push air through screens that are hidden around the edges or bottom. This makes it so that dust doesn’t enter the computer, which means that heatsinks will be cleaner and more efficient, which in turn means less work for the fans. 

If the noise volume of computers is off putting you or making you avoid gaming or for example is disturbing work in a science lab or graphic design studio, consider looking into ways to make your computer quiet. Who knows, maybe these technologies will soon make their ways into custom laptops!