I Give Noctua Too Much Money
by Molly Y Posted on: 6/1/2023
Build Description
This is my main gaming PC made up of old and newer parts. It's set up in the living room, so being quiet is most important. The case used to have one of those solid plastic front-panels with few vents, so I removed it and just exposed the fan filter directly. The GPU also had a lot of extra plastic covering up the fan exhaust, and I modified the GPU shroud by cutting out most of the plastic bits. Combined with a moderate undervolt, the whole system runs very cool/quiet even while playing games at 1440p.
Favorite Feature
Good airflow and fans means it's very quiet even while gaming.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Vermeer 3.7GHz 6-Core AM4 Boxed Processor - Wraith Stealth Cooler Included
Qty: 1
$147.98
Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite AX V2 AMD AM4 ATX Motherboard
Qty: 1
$159.99
Got it on deep sale combo with the CPU.
XFX AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB GDDR6 THICC III Ultra
Qty: 1
$435.00
Bought just before the pandemic. The THICC3 is notorious for being "padded out" with a lot of extra plastic parts. The extra plastic actually blocks airflow. I removed and modded the shroud with a dremel so It looks a bit off- but I improved the airflow and noise noticeably.RDNA1 runs a bit warm already, but a very minor undervolt also keeps it cool and quiet.
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3600 PC4-28800 CL18 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit F4-3600C18D-16GVK - Black
Qty: 1
$41.99
Fractal Design Define S
Qty: 1
$100.00
Define S for "silent" no rgb, no window. The front panel isn't meshed and blocks airflow, so I removed the panel and use the fan dustcover underneath.
seasonic USA FOCUS GX-650
Qty: 1
$120.00
Never cheap out on the power supply.
Noctua NH-D15 Brown CPU Cooler
Qty: 1
$114.99
Total overkill for a 5600xt, but it's previously been used on a first gen 1800x with a heavy overclock.
Samsung SSD 960 PRO NVMe M.2 2TB
Qty: 1
$189.00
Truthfully it gets a little hot- in fact it's almost impossible to get a heatsink to contact the disk controller.
Noctua NF-A14 PWM
Qty: 4
$18.00
Upgraded the casefans with Noctuas.