Good point. I mean, you could buy some plastic spray and apply conformal coating to all components upon installation, but it's a bit tedious as you would basically have to do a full teardown first, with how everything these days is covered with plastic and heatsinks. And I don't think you'd want to get any into the CPU socket or expansion slots either (socket cover + painter's tape FTW, but that's one more step obviously).
I'd go for a sealed case, water cooled with external radiator.
)
hdplex.com
Taking a long term perspective (3 to 5 years) - unless the unit runs 90%+ of the time in zero rpm mode, the gradual acretion of dust coating internal heatsink fins, will tend to make the system less efficient over time, and will gradually ramp up fan speed (and noise) over time.Imo, what you want is a psu with what is commonly referred to as a "zero rpm mode". Basically the psu monitors power draws and temp and only runs the fan when needed.
imo, you always want at least one fan, because lots of stuff on a pc (besides the cpu and gpu) needs to be to be kept cool. With that being said, the fans that come with most cases are mediocre at best. The best way to pick a fan is to follow a fee of the people who benchmark them.
for example, take a look at the rpm/cfm & rpm/dBA charts in the is review.
Endorfy Fluctus 120 PWM Fan Review
The Endorfy Fluctus 120 PWM is a budget-friendly fan which gets the basics right, and then builds upon it to deliver decent performance at a low noise level. Add in some engineering optimization to make the fans feel even quieter than they are, and it offers good value for multiple use cases.www.techpowerup.com
Another things that you can do, is change the fan curves in the bios. very few people outside of power users ever seem to do this.
Or... you get a properly configured fanless design, and relegate internal dusting to ancient history....
Same here but with i9-12900K.My fanless HTPC has been running for 3 or 4 years now, I based it on the Ryzen 4750G APU (which was a bit hard to get hold of, it is well night identical to the 5700G that had a full market release)...
I like to run my PC's for as long as possible, 10 years not being unusual, as long as it copes with the work it is given.... and streaming, media (video and audio), along with light gaming have been working well. - Over the longer term I find the issues to be the obvious ones.... fans bring in dust and fans tend to fail over the long term (bearings etc...) - and of course, any moving parts involve noise, and being located right next to my speakers, a prime objective is silence!
The APU has a max thermal rating of 65C... - theoretically 65C dissipation should be enough - but actual testing of the CPU shows that if you really try to stress it, the real heat dissipation is more like 95C.
I also wanted a case that would fit into my components rack and be relatively unobtrusive
So I went for the HDplex H5
HDPLEX H5 Fanless Chassis
HDPLEX H5 Enjoys Free Shipping Worldwide Stock Status Asia :In Stock USA :Sold Out ETA Nov 12th Germany : Sold Out
The whole side is the same sort of heatsink that muscular Class AB (or A) amps often have... and the entire case is beautifully finished.
8 Heatpipes connect the CPU to the heatsink.
The manufacturer claims a TDP of 125C... personally I have found that it tends to max out at around 85C so perhaps the manufacturer is being a little optimistic! - still the end result is a system that under any normal use, including gaming, keeps the CPU below 65C.
Under normal HTPC uses, the CPU tends to idle along in the high 30C's and low 40C's - depending on room temp
It has 32Gb of RAM, lightly overclocked (to optimise GPU performance - through RAM overclock)
It truly is completely silent, containing an SSD, RAM, CPU, and fanless PSU (the PSU is the HDPlex provided unit bolted to the case for cooling ... so no fan there either).
No concerns about noise, no concerns about dust or longevity. (it was built circa 2021... now 3 years old, and no performance issues encountered at this stage)
It does depend on your workload requirements...
My silent i7 is almost 12 years old, still my primary PC. I'd prefer a PC that's silent nearly all the time, but with fans that spin up only under heavy load, for stability, which these days is almost never.
Why a fan if you can go fanless?
quietpc-usa.com
Using a 35W i7, you can get zero noise if you use a large Noctua CPU fan. The only fan in my system, and nothing ever gets hot or noisy in any way even when I do some video work (semi-pro stuff, though, not the most demanding 4k jobs).
I'm not sure about the GTX1060 as it is a bit dated but the new cards have a power save feature when they are doing simple desktop stuff. The fan stops completely and engages when being worked. Why 64 GB of RAM?
Dated, ouch it's only about 2 years old.
LOL
GTX1060 Release Date July 19th, 2016.Dated, ouch it's only about 2 years old.
At the time I was looking with something with enough muscle to stream 4k video over HDMI but didn't need a
really high powered card, not a gamer at all. I was able to grab this guy for like $130 and it has filled my needs.
I was really out of the loop at the time and pretty ignorant on the video card market, still am. Hoping this build will
take me to the end of the line.
"Why 64 GB of RAM?"
It was cheap.
Integrated graphics in Intel i CPUs (even older ones) have no problem with 4k streaming. Video production @4k may be somewhat slow though.Dated, ouch it's only about 2 years old.
At the time I was looking with something with enough muscle to stream 4k video over HDMI but didn't need a
really high powered card, not a gamer at all. I was able to grab this guy for like $130 and it has filled my needs.
I was really out of the loop at the time and pretty ignorant on the video card market, still am. Hoping this build will
take me to the end of the line.
"Why 64 GB of RAM?"
It was cheap.
I didn't trust high demand integrated not to crash when running other demanding programs at the same time.
