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!

Budgeting a Custom Gaming PC Build

When shopping for a custom gaming PC it can be easy to become overwhelmed and think that a custom gaming computer will be extremely expensive. When you’re learning about the components that will go into your computer you (if you’re anything like me) will often compare similar graphics cards, RAM, motherboards etc. and as you’re comparing more and more parts, you convince yourself that you need the most expensive, high performance, option. 

It’s easy to get carried away when configuring a custom gaming build, like those here: http://www.avadirect.com/mini-custom-gaming-pcs. When I’m putting together a computer on somewhere like PCPartsPicker or Newegg I often end up dreaming about the best computer I could possibly build instead of realistically putting together a configuration I could actually afford. There is definitely a difference between window shopping and actually preparing a computer that you intend to purchase.

For one, consider what you’ll use the computer for. Specifically, which games will you play? Consider that some of your favorite games may be a little older. I mean, who doesn’t love to fire up Portal every now and then? However, you should also consider that this computer will also need to play new games that are released several years into its lifespan. And just because you’re into simulations and strategy games like Cities: Skylines and Kerbal Space Program, that doesn’t mean that you won’t be playing the new Star Wars: Battlefront, Fallout 4 or Half Life 3!

When choosing parts for your custom gaming computer it’s easy to convince yourself that you need the highest performance parts available. However, this isn’t always true. Consider the processor. Sure, the Intel i7 is the top of the line (well, except the Xeon processors which are for servers and workstations), but do you really need it? Most often the answer is no. If you’re playing graphics intensive games like first-person-shooters, your computer will need lots of graphics processing performance, but not so much general processing. For these games, even if you have multiple GTX 980s, an i5 will be just fine. If you’re playing simulations games like Kerbal Space Program, then your computer will need more processing power, and less graphics performance. However, if your computer is able to output a frame rate that is higher than the refresh rate of your display, this doesn’t matter. Additional processing power will make your computer output higher FPS, but your monitor won’t be able to display the additional frames and you won’t see any benefit.

So it doesn’t always make sense to get the highest performance components. Myself, I prefer to get an Intel i5 (a K version so that it is easy to overclock) and the best graphics card I can afford.

Why Choose a Custom PC?

There are thousands of computers available for purchase today. With all of these PCs to choose from, why would anyone decide to buy or build a custom computer? One could certainly argue that you could find exactly the PC you are looking for that has been pre-configured and built by a large manufacturer and available for purchase at a retailer or online. This certainly makes sense for someone shopping for a laptop or simply a cheap computer for basic office tasks. Sometimes, though that simply won’t do. Gamers often have specific criteria when they are looking for a new computer, and these criteria will be drastically different depending on the specific person and what kinds of games they are looking to play.

First person shooters are a popular category today. These games require lots of graphics performance to produce a high frame rate that is crucial for competitive online play. In these games the CPU doesn’t matter as much, as long as it is at least an Intel i5. The graphics card is usually the bottleneck and will determine your gaming performance.

Strategy games, on the other hand, like Heroes of the Storm, Dota 2 or Hearthstone are usually limited by the processor. These games don’t have intense 3D graphics like first person shooters (they do have 3D graphics, in a sense, but they are usually limited to just a few perspectives, and this doesn’t require lots of graphics processing performance). These games will hardly use the graphics card and have the processor running at full steam. However players will usually get very high frame rates with these games in the triple digits, and at this point it doesn’t really matter since gamers are limited to the refresh rate of their monitor. Some monitors have refresh rates as high as 144Hz meaning it could handle up to 144 FPS, but many gamers have monitors that are only 60 Hz.

Since some people demand very specific specifications on their computers, they opt for a custom PC that is designed to fit their needs exactly. Because of this they also save money by not buying components that they do not need. Some manufacturers bundle high performance graphics cards with top-of-the-line processors like the Intel i7, but many people would prefer an i5 instead. If you buy a preconfigured computer then, say, upgrade the RAM yourself, you will have spent extra money on the memory that you took out of your computer. What a waste! When you're building or buying a custom gaming PC every component and every dollar matters.

Upgrading Your Custom Computer

When should you upgrade your computer? How much should you spend doing so? And most importantly, what component should you upgrade? You’ll be faced with all of these questions, and more, when you decide to upgrade your custom computer. But let’s start with an even more basic question. Why should you upgrade your PC?

It should be no surprise to those of us who have ever used an electronic device that they become outdated quickly. Sure you may be able to keep using them, but not always, as devices that run operating systems may become too old or too slow to run the latest operating system, that applications on the OS that it can run are no longer supported. This may not be that important for standalone devices, like DVD players, radios, etc. However, if a device is connected to the internet it will become outdated and may even stop working much more quickly. Cell phones are a good example.

In the late 90s and 2000s people upgraded their cell phones for only a handful of reasons. The first is that they were switching carriers. Back then almost everyone was on a two-year contract for their cell service. In exchange they were given a subsidized (aka reduced in price) cell phone. When those two years were up some people wanted to switch carriers in search of lower monthly charges and or better reception. But people also upgraded their phones because of all the new features available on them. 15 years ago no one would be surprised by the fact that your cell phone was black and white and didn’t have Bluetooth. Innovations like camera phones drove people to buy new phones. 

Today however there aren’t many new must-have features on smartphones. However, with the fact that they are connected to the internet, what software they are able to run is a big issue. If you have a phone over 5 years old you may soon not be able to download a new version of your app, and the version you can won’t connect to their servers because it isn’t supported. 

The same is true for computers. It’ll be shiny and run great when new, but over time it will become sluggish compared to newer models. You’ll be able to upgrade the operating system on your custom gaming PC for a few iterations, but eventually you won’t. Similarly, you’ll be able to run the latest games at high settings and high frame rates for a while, then you’ll have to settle on mediocre and finally the lowest settings just to get any of the new games to run. Eventually you won’t be able to play any of the games that are released. However, this will take a longer time than for phones, and there are things you can do to extend the lifetime of your computer.

Upgrading a CPU isn’t for most of us, but it will have a drastic effect on the performance and lifetime of your computer. The new Intel Skylake processors plug into a new socket on motherboards, so you won’t be able to upgrade your old computer to these new processors, but this does ensure that if you buy a new computer with a Skylake processor you’ll be able to upgrade the CPU for some time in the future. 

Upgrading the memory and graphics cards are easy, and I’d like to think almost anyone can do this. You just have to make sure you’re buying the right type of memory: DDR3 or DDR4, and for the most part that’s it! Obviously you’ll want to upgrade to more memory rather than less, and if you can pay attention to details, the speed of the memory is also helpful. Upgrading the graphics card is even easier, as they all fit into the PCI slots on your motherboard. Simply buy a graphics card from the current generation on the market and install it instead of your old one. You will probably have to update the drivers. These two simple upgrades will ensure that you can use your computer for a long time to come!

Do you need a mouse for your Custom Laptop?

Laptops today come with at least one means of navigation: the touchpad, sometimes called a trackpad. This pointing device has been used on computers since the 80s. In 1994 Apple was the first to put a touchpad in a laptop. Earlier laptops used trackballs. Although trackballs may be still used for ergonomic purposed for desktops, they are almost never found in modern laptops like these: http://www.avadirect.com/custom-laptop-computers.

Another early pointing device is called the pointing stick, or what I like to call the nubbin. This pointing device is a small rubber joystick that is mounted in the keyboard and is still found on some modern Dell and Lenovo laptops. If a pointing stick was included in a custom laptop there was usually another pointing device like a touchpad or a trackball.

Some of the latest laptops also have another method of navigation: touchscreens. Windows 8.1 was designed to be touch-friendly, so a big wave of touchscreen laptops was released when Windows 8 was available. The touchscreens on laptops most commonly allow for multi-touch, i.e. when the screen recognizes that you have multiple fingers touching it and it uses this to recognize a certain gesture, like pinching to zoom in on a picture or map.

So with all of these navigational devices available on laptops would you ever need an external mouse? That is not a rhetorical question but rather a personal one. Which pointing device you prefer is a personal decision. For some people the convenience and the portability of a touchpad is all they need. This is especially true for college students and road warriors who have been toting their laptops from room to room.

Others prefer the ergonomics of the mouse. Using a trackpad extensively can lead to issues like carpal tunnel. Mice (at least large ones) tend to cradle your hand in a more comfortable position reducing strain and repetitive motion issues, whereas with a touchpad you can use it in any hand position, including uncomfortable positions or ones that cause carpal tunnel.

For others external mice give them the precision they seek. Graphic designers, engineers and even gamers rely on the accuracy of their pointing device and this cannot be achieved with a trackpad or a pointing stick. Above all else, some users are just used to using a mouse and will carry one around along with their laptop. There are many portable mini mice available for such a purpose. These mice are typically tiny at just a couple inches long. For the most part they have all the regular features of a computer mouse: left click, right click and a clickable scroll wheel. Usually they are wired and have a thin retractable USB cable. I don’t recommend these mice as they are still small enough to be uncomfortable and cause hand cramping, and if you’re going to carry something around it might as well be a full sized mouse. After all, the regular mouse isn’t that large compared to the rest of your custom laptop. Finally, since the trackpad or other pointing device on your laptop can break, it’s always a good idea to have a spare so you don’t have to end up using someone else’s custom PC.

Cooling your Custom Gaming Computer

All electronics get hot when they’re used. We all know this. The radios in our cars warm up, especially when we play a CD. Today’s car radios tend to be built in units, but if you have an earlier car and ever replaced the radio, you’ll see some heatsinks. Our smartphones, too, heat up, especially when we’re playing a game, watching a video or charging them.

It should be no surprise then, that our computers make lots of heat as well. If you’ve ever actually put your laptop on your lap while you’re using it you would have felt the heat (it’s even worse in shorts!). As our electronics move electrons around to process information, all that electricity generates heat. The more you use it and push it, the more heat it creates.

Custom gaming computers often feature top-of-the line components like graphics cards and processors. These are the parts that provide the gaming performance and also generate the most heat. These components are pushed to the edge of their capabilities when gamers fire up their favorite games like CS:GO or GTA V, and they always try to get the highest frame rate, the highest resolution, and the highest graphics quality.

So your computer gets hot, so what? Too much heat can actually damage the expensive components in your computer. When modern computer components detect too much heat they will first clock themselves down so they produce less heat, and then they will just turn off.

This begs the question: how do you cool your computer to prevent this? There are several cooling methods, and they are commonly used in conjunction in a single custom gaming pc. The first is called passive cooling. This is used when the component doesn’t get that warm, like a memory card or a network adapter, for example. This method uses something that is called a heatsink. A metal that is good at conducting heat, like copper, touches the hot component, and moves heat away from it. Sometimes if it moves it a great distance and the metal is long and thin, this is called a heat pipe. Heat pipes are commonly used in custom laptops. A heatsink has many prongs, slots or spikes to create lots of surface area. This creates more area for the heat to be dissipated into the surrounding air. Passive cooling is also used when you want to create a quiet or silent computer or device.

Another method for cooling is using fans. Fans are almost always used in conjunction with passive heating. As the heatsink transfers the heat away from the component and into the air, the fans move cool air into the computer and hot air out. There could also be dedicated fans that blow air on a heatsink of a specific component. CPU coolers and graphics cards often have dedicated fans.

The final method is liquid cooling. Instead of transferring the heat from the device to the air through a heatsink, the heat is transferred to a liquid coolant through a cooling block. The hot coolant is then pumped to a radiator where fans push air through a capillary-like mesh of tubes containing the coolant.

What Makes a Custom Gaming PC?

Most personal computers today run some version of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Even today, Windows 7 has about a 40 to 50% market share, but this is changing as users upgrade to Windows 10. When computers run the same operating system, they can all run the same software and programs. What this means is that while all computers would be able to install a certain application, some will be able to run it better than others. Some low performance computers would even crash.

So you can run a computer game in many computers, but what separates a custom gaming PC from a normal computer? There are many things, but ultimately, there is no definite measure, as all computers fit on a spectrum – some are basic, and some are more powerful; some are used professionally, and some are used for gaming.

Graphics cards in a custom gaming PC

The most important distinguishing feature of a gaming computer is the graphics card. Some may argue that the most important part is actually the CPU, or processor, but since all computers have them, the processor is not a distinguishing feature. Discrete graphics cards, as opposed to integrated graphics, separate the tasks of rendering 3D scenes and creating visuals from the CPU and give it the GPU, or graphics processing unit. This give the CPU the ability to focus on working on the physics and the AI side of the game. This allows your computer to produce better looking graphics, on a higher resolution, and faster for a better frame rate.

Basic or office computers may have discrete graphics cards – perhaps the motherboard doesn’t have integrated graphics, or the user needed a specific video output, but these graphics cards will usually be on the lower end. Workstations used for 3D design, video editing, or engineering will have graphics cards too, but usually they would be the professional-grade ones, like the Nvidia Quadro and AMD FirePro. However, that is not to say that all computers that have graphics cards like the Nvidia GeForce series are custom gaming computers. As I said, the line is blurred.

Motherboards and Processors in Gaming Computers

Custom gaming PCs will sometimes have specific motherboards and processors that are designed for gaming. For example, the two new Intel processors that use the Skylake architecture are designed for gaming. The Intel Core i7 6700K and the i5 6600K were the first processors to be released using the new Skylake architecture. The K at the end means that the processor is factory unlocked with a multiplier so it is easy to overclock. Who overclocks their computers? Gamers. That is not to say that all gamers will overclock their processors, as some don’t. Also many make do with non K versions of processors.

Motherboards can be geared for gaming too, and could have features like SLI or CrossFire for the use of multiple graphics cards. Who would need multiple graphics cards? You could probably guess. These motherboards also include features such as network adapters that optimize online gaming traffic. However, not all gamers can afford these top-of-the-line motherboards, and not all gamers need them. Another factor is size. Typical gaming PCs are large because they need lots of room for cooling air flow as well as future upgrades and large graphics cards. However some users love their mini gaming PC that they take to LAN parties.

What is a Server?

If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you’ve heard of the word server. Not the server or waiter from a restaurant but as a computer term. If you’ve ever visited a website and encountered an error it may have mentioned this word, as in “server error” or “server is overcapacity.” At work or in the office you may have heard of a shared files server, or an email server. But what is a server, and what does it do?

If you close your eyes and imagine a server you’re probably thinking of a room filled with stacks of computer equipment. It is loud, and tall as computers are arranged in racks. This is indeed what many companies use in their server rooms.

Let’s get technical about the meaning of the word server, as this term is used widely in the area of information technology. A server is both a computer program that is capable of receiving and handling requests from other computers and programs, and it is also the computer hardware that is running that software.

There are many servers that we may or may not be familiar with: file servers, email servers, web servers, database servers, print servers, etc. You can even turn your old computer into a server for your home! Why would you want to do this? Let’s look at an example.

You got a new laptop. You also have a printer. You want to be able to use this printer wirelessly from all of the computers on your network, but this printer doesn’t have an Ethernet port or wireless capabilities. You may think you’re SOL but you’re not. If you connect a computer to this printer and share the printer on your network, you’ve created a print server! Now any computer on your home network can connect to the computer hooked up to the printer and send it things to print. This computer accepts the requests from the others and send the documents to the printer.

What else could you do? Well for starters you could share some (or all) of the folders on this computer so that you’ll be able to access that data from anywhere in your home. Now you’ve got a file server! If you install a small program to share media over a protocol called DLNA compliant Upnp you’ve got a media server that’ll allow you to access photos, music and videos from your home theater devices, like smart TVs, blu-ray players, Xboxes and PlayStations!

Most of the servers at work are just beefed up versions of this example. They use dedicated and specialized hardware instead of old computers, and they have special pieces of software that do things like host databases, or provide email. It’s usually best to have dedicated servers for each application, but sometimes that isn’t feasibly. The workaround is creating virtual machines – emulations of individual computers inside of the physical computers. One physical server can host many VMs. This separates the servers and allows you to track down problems.