Best silent gaming PC build 2023 – keeping things quiet

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In this article, we’re going to show you our best silent gaming PC build. There are so many moving parts in a PC that it becomes quite the task to try and eliminate all noise but that is where WePC comes in. We’re going to show you our recommendations to help make a build with minimal noise that still offers awesome performance to create the best quiet gaming PC out there.

Elsewhere in this article, we’ll delve a bit deeper into the quieter, more efficient components and go over a few reasons why you may want to purchase a silent PC build. This way you can make an informed choice and ultimately decide whether to build your own silent gaming PC or modify the build we provide.

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What You Get For Your Money

While we haven’t set a strict budget, this silent gaming PC is going to offer the best gaming performance available and that comes with a hefty price tag. The components featured in this build are all top shelf but we have managed to keep this below the $2000 mark. At this price point, you are going to have an excellent gaming rig for years to come, not to mention one of the quietest.

Performance

With this silent PC, there are no compromises on acoustic and gaming performance. This is the best quiet PC build for good reason and brings you one of the best processors on the market, along with a powerful graphics card. The other components are all strong contenders in their respective fields but with silent operation being the running theme where possible.

How We Choose

Our team has years of experience behind them building PCs for a range of needs and budgets. All this knowledge combined with hours of research, user feedback, and onsite benchmarking is what goes into choosing the best components for our builds.

We look for value for money, how the components perform together and focus on gamer’s needs to make sure our builds are the best your budget can buy.

We build all these PCs ourselves, in-house, so trust us when we say we want to make them as good as possible. We actually use all these builds ourselves day-to-day in the WePC offices.

How We Test

We build each of our selected PC’s from scratch to make sure all the parts we recommend work well together, fit into the selected case, and provide the best performance possible for the price range.

Once built, the PCs are used in the office for everyday work as well as a range of games from light to heavy-duty. While we test, we also run benchmarking tests to see how well our builds perform, all while keeping an eye on the temperature of the components themselves.

We know how much some of our readers enjoy overclocking their PCs, so we made sure to test that out too. So, you can feel safe knowing that these machines can be pushed beyond their basic capabilities. But, please make sure you know how to overclock before trying to over-task your builds.

NOTE: Due to the ongoing effects of the global coronavirus pandemic, some retailers are experiencing stock issues. WePC constantly updates our pages to reflect current availability, so if the PC you want shows as out of stock, check back later or check out these alternatives.

The Best Silent Prebuilt Gaming PC

This 3080 prebuilt gaming PC has everything you are going to need. The HP Omen 30L comes with a brilliant CPU and GPU for gaming, plus all the little extras are of high quality.

With a powerful processor combined with the 32GB of RAM, you have a system that is capable of much more than just gaming.

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First, let’s define “best”. Best performance? Best value? Best noise level?

We obviously placed a special priority on noise level since this is the best silent gaming PC, but we tried to go for a bit of all three. After all, no one wants a silent machine that can’t play AAA games. This PC is considered a high-end machine that will stay cool and quiet, without compromising on performance. If you follow our part list, you should come out the other side with a near-silent gaming PC able to trade blows with the best of them.

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Our Best Silent PC Build

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Our silent gaming PC build is going to be everything you need to have the best gaming experience while keeping the acoustic levels low. This silent PC build features high-end components that will tackle anything and comes with a case that takes care of any noise, making this the best quiet gaming PC out there.

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is one of the best CPUs on the market. This processer gives PC builders a shed load of extra power while being priced similarly to Intel’s i9-10900K.

This 5000-series processor knocked Intel off the top spot, with better efficiency and performance, and the extra cores/threads you get with the 5900X make this a steal. With the 5900X, it doesn’t matter if you stream, render videos, or just want to game, this CPU will provide seriously high performance across the board for your different tasks.

This AMD chip boasts 12 cores and 24 threads, making this a very capable CPU in general. the multi-threaded power of this processor makes it ideal for heavy-duty tasks and it will future proof your setup for years to come.

The 5900X is a great CPU and with overclocking potential thrown in too, you are in for a treat.

Motherboards don’t really have an impact on in-game FPS or sound, however, the features of a motherboard still matter. This Asus AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) motherboard uses the AM4 chipset and enables CPU overclocking but you may not want to do this with a silent PC. The X570-Plus has some great features, making this board more efficient and efficiency is what we want with a silent build!

Aside from that, it’s a full-sized ATX motherboard with great components, supports PCIe 4.0, excellent VRMs, Wi-Fi, and m.2 heatsinks, further reducing temps. A great motherboard!

This CPU cooler has a monstrous heatsink and does a fine job of cooling your CPU but it manages to do this while only producing a max noise of 14.5dBa. There were liquid cooling solutions that would probably shave off an extra few degrees on your temps but this may compromise on noise levels. Along with the heatsink, there are 6 heat pipes distributing heat pretty evenly and 2 x PWM fans to push that heat away from your motherboard.

A cheap, efficient, and quiet cooling solution.

RAM doesn’t make any noise! It also doesn’t really generate much heat either. There truly isn’t much to say about this. We simply decided upon 16GB of high-quality fast RAM as you don’t want to be left short with a build like this one. For less than $100 you arguably get some of the best RAM for performance capable of running at 3600MHz. That’s a bargain and from a manufacturer you can trust.

A high-end gaming computer is only as good as its graphics card? Well, what about one of the latest GPUs? That’s right; we are going for the RTX 3080 and the results will blow you away. This GPU is one of the highest performing cards in the benchmarks, and while many will point out the RTX 3090 is slightly better, the FPS counts in 4K are truly amazing and for the price, this is the best choice.

The graphics card is likely to be the noisiest component when under load.

As we alluded to earlier, an SSD is a requirement with this build and not an option. You would normally expect to see a smaller m.2 solution recommended with a large HDD for your media but HDDs can produce excessive amounts of unwanted noise and they are slower! This PCIe 4.0 M2 not only provides some of the fastest storage speeds but also in-turn offers excellent value. We also opted for an M.2 version, so you won’t need to worry about mounting any 2.5 drives or noisy HDDs.

Last but certainly not least is the case. The Corsair 4000D may not be the quietest case on the market, however, its airflow and ability to help your system perform are excellent for the price. The superb airflow means that your parts are being kept cool in a very efficient manner, meaning less noise. Sound dampening materials add very little in terms of acoustic performance in a lot of cases and the additional temperature increases from lack of ventilation can sometimes be counterintuitive, something that will not happen with the 4000D.

This 850W PSU is more than enough to power this build, in fact, it is overkill but we have added this headroom to make sure the stress on your system is kept as low as possible which in turn keeps the noise down. This is an 80+ gold certified PSU, which pretty much means that it will only consume the amount of power that is needed and no more. This results in less excess heat released into the case, and less power required which again will keep that noise down. This whisper-quiet PSU is perfect and it comes fully modular for an easier installation.

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Things To Consider

How To Build A Quiet PC

Don’t buy a hard drive – The differences between hard drives and solid-state drives are numerous, but their most inherent difference is in moving parts. Hard drives have spinning disks that make noise, especially under load. SSDs have no moving parts whatsoever, and therefore don’t make any noise.

Liquid coolers may not be the best choice – While certain closed-loop solutions do excellent jobs of cooling CPUs and keeping temps at a minimum they may not be that quiet. Remember the coolers pump will always be running in your system and will only get louder as your CPU is put under load.

Buy a high-spec PSU – Power Supply Units are always important. Go too cheap and you’re going to get poor efficiency and excessive noise. What you’re looking for isn’t just raw wattage, but a high power efficiency level and great cooling profile so your PSU doesn’t get noisy on you.

The case matters more than ever – While the case may be an afterthought for all but the most aesthetically inclined, especially for budget builds, that isn’t the case here. You want large cases with great airflow and solid construction that keeps noise inside while still pushing heat out. Oddly, there are not a lot of cases like this out there, but fortunately for you, we found one of the best.

Understanding Computer Noise

With quiet PCs, it’s important to figure out the noise levels from your components. We define this with the international standard of dB (decibels).

There are several elements to consider when it comes to noise from your components as there are a few that can impact the level quite a bit.

  • CPU Cooling – The latest-gen CPUs consume a lot of power, sometimes up to 140W. This high amount of power requires adequate cooling. Whether you go for air or liquid cooler you are benefiting from a cooler less stressed component which will produce less noise when operating. This is particularly true for an overclocked CPU, as these consume even more power so need more effective cooling to prevent overheating. A high amount of heat will bring more noise to your system so be careful.
  • GPU – Graphics a power-hungry component in modern PC’s consuming a high amount of watts. The GTX/RTX cards are the most popular and the standard cooler used by most PC manufacturers can produce as much as 41dB when gaming. With this in mind, we selected the Asus ROG Strix card as it showed relatively lower noise levels compared to its rivals and it just so happens to be the best RTX 2080 TI card.
  • SSD – We have opted for an M.2 drive in this build simply because they are an improvement on your standard SSD’s but also offer zero noise output! HDDs often run with fast RPMs and can make an increased amount of noise when reading/writing so we have avoided one altogether.
  • PSU – A high-quality PSU will make your system quieter. This is largely down to the fact the more expensive the PSU the higher the efficiency rating(Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Titanium) and thus consume less electricity and so are easier to keep cool. Some PSUs also feature intelligent fan control that means the fan only starts spinning up when the PSU is under heavy load, they sometimes have a mode called zero RPM which will basically mean the fan won’t spin until required.
  • Case – The case will normally be your source of good airflow, cable management, and space but when it comes to a silent PC you need a case that does a bit more than this. Cases like the one we recommend here are built with quietness in mind so you can rest assured this will block out any remaining noise from your components.

For the ultimate silent setup you may also wish to replace the fans in the case of quieter ones but this isn’t a major requirement. Have a look at our best case fan options and decide if you would like to go down an even quieter route.

Why Build a Silent Gaming PC?

Whether you hate noise or stream, a silent gaming PC is going to give you all the zen you need. Powerful gaming PCs run hot, which in turn, will make components and internal cooling solutions run a bit faster to try and compensate. For the ultimate performance, you ideally want your PC to be as cool as possible but we eventually start to see an acoustic trade-off.

Not all is lost though, there is definitely a balance of components that can be used to produce a high-quality gaming PC with less noise. Fans, hard drives, and well nearly everything makes noise in a PC, which can all add up and produce an ominous hum in the background. Many of you may not even notice this but for some it is unbearable.

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Best Prebuilt Gaming PC Brands

Every recommended prebuilt gaming PC in this article is from a reputable manufacturer. You are probably wondering how we know what the best gaming PC brands are? Well, we have done our research and purchased PCs from these brands.

Most notable brands:

Alienware
Corsair
CyberPowerPC
SkyTech
iBUYPOWER
Thermaltake
MSI
Scan 3XS
Overclockers UK

Calculating The PSU Wattage

Making sure your PSU provides the correct amount of wattage to your custom build PC is an essential part of the build process. For that reason, we’ve created a handy PSU calculator which will work out exactly what PSU wattage your components require – no matter how many changes you make.

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Operating System & Peripherals

This section is separate from the silent PC build since we only factor in the cost of the base hardware and most people already have their own peripherals laying around.

If you don’t, though, that’s fine, we’ve got some more recommendations to make.

Note: These will raise the price of the build!

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