Ask Slashdot: Making a 'Wife Friendly' Gaming PC? 720
shadeshope writes Having just gotten married, I find that for some inexplicable reason my wife doesn't like my huge, noisy, 'ugly' gaming PC being in the living room. I have tried hiding it in a TV cabinet: still too noisy. I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games. Have any other slashdotters encountered this problem? I don't want to buy a console (Steam sales let me game so cheaply), or mess with water cooling. Ideally I would just hide it in the attic, is there some wireless technology that would be fast enough for gaming use? I have become quite attached to 'behemoth.' I have been upgrading him for years and he is the centre of my digital life. I run plex home theatre, media centre, steam, iTunes and air server. Will I have to do my gaming in the spare room? Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.
Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Your wife just wants to make the house more kiddie friendly. Get a laptop.
Re: Don't fight it (Score:3)
And get to work on making those kids.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
New phase of your life. Time to put the games aside.
New phase of your life. Time to put the things you like doing aside.
New phase of your life. Time to realize that it's possible to do more than one thing.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Happy wife, happy life.
Seriously. Keep her happy.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently it doesn't work the other way around, though. There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make all sorts of completely unnecessary sacrifices to appease some control freak partner, but the partner doesn't take into account the other person's feelings, as if their own are any more important.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently it doesn't work the other way around, though. There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make all sorts of completely unnecessary sacrifices to appease some control freak partner, but the partner doesn't take into account the other person's feelings, as if their own are any more important.
Welcome to reality, my friend. When you find someone who expects sacrifices out of you that you can afford to make, and will sacrifice for you unnecessarily when it matters more to you, marry that person.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively, pick an intelligent partner that understands that other people have feelings too.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively, pick an intelligent partner that understands that other people have feelings too.
That's what dogs are for.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make all sorts of completely unnecessary sacrifices to appease some control freak partner, but the partner doesn't take into account the other person's feelings, as if their own are any more important.
This is the type of thing you keep in mind before getting married...
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Just after getting married it probably the last "major new setting of rules".
If the PPer want's to stand strong for something that is important in his life, this is the right moment. After all, that's exactly what his spouse is trying to do - kick gaming from her view. The living case of "I'll format him when we get married". ....
If he is ok with that - he should listen to the first poster.
If he's not - he should set some rules / code of conduct with her. For example this may consist of:
1) week days and annual days (eg. their anniversary) without gaming
2) things that should be done before around home he could begin gaming
3) no interrupting him every 2 minutes where there is no major fire
4) "magic escape word" for both - for emergency, where she REALLY needs him / where he REALLY needs half an hour resetting his brain
5)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The living case of "I'll format him when we get married".
Between the time of engagement and the wedding, I behaved like an absolute baboon. I farted, burped, left my dirty socks (and worse) everywhere around the house. Every time I got a complaint, I smiled and asked her "Are you sure you want to marry me? I'm not going to change after we're married".
:)
The "idiot"* still married me, and the few times when she does complain, I'll point her to our engagement period.
* idiot because she was the only person of womankind stupid enough to marry me
Re: (Score:3)
Just after getting married it probably the last "major new setting of rules".
If the PPer want's to stand strong for something that is important in his life, this is the right moment. After all, that's exactly what his spouse is trying to do - kick gaming from her view. The living case of "I'll format him when we get married". ....
If he is ok with that - he should listen to the first poster.
If he's not - he should set some rules / code of conduct with her. For example this may consist of:
1) week days and annual days (eg. their anniversary) without gaming
2) things that should be done before around home he could begin gaming
3) no interrupting him every 2 minutes where there is no major fire
4) "magic escape word" for both - for emergency, where she REALLY needs him / where he REALLY needs half an hour resetting his brain
5)
All that you said is just BS if she meant what she said: "It's too noisy and ugly for the living room".
Why do so many people assume that this guys wife is a liar?
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make all sorts of completely unnecessary sacrifices to appease some control freak partner
moving the gaming machine to a spare room or the basement is simply a concession to the reality that you are no longer living alone, and that maintaining healthy relationships with your wife and kids counts for something more than the latest and greatest in RPGs and first person shooters.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe she just wants to be a normal adult with a normal adult living room. Sounds reasonable.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:4, Insightful)
The definition of gaming as a hobby is not, "Gaming where ever, whenever you like, however you like."
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
moving the gaming machine to a spare room or the basement is simply a concession to the reality that you are no longer living alone, and that maintaining healthy relationships with your wife and kids counts for something more than the latest and greatest in RPGs and first person shooters.
So many posts here say you should just give up your hobbies, as if her feelings about the matter inherently matter more than your own.
How is this telling him that he has to "give up his hobbies." This is just saying that he should keep his toys out of the common space, same as (eventually) the kids.
Marriage is 80%/80% (Score:5, Insightful)
If you expect a marriage to be 50/50, you'll probably be disappointed. Because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, two people who are equally giving will probably feel that they're doing 80%. I do a lot for my wife, and she does for me. Mostly, we do for us. We want time together, so we make time for that, etc.
Re:Marriage is 80%/80% (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up. If you're always looking to make sure your partner's doing "their 50%" and you're not doing more than "your 50%" you're going to end up bitter very quickly. You don't want to go there.
Re: (Score:3)
One problem is that partner A will consider as part of A's contribution things partner B doesn't care about, and vice versa.
A: "Dear, I spend 50 hours a week keeping the house clean."
B: "Why bother? When I lived alone, I spent 5 hours a year keeping the house clean."
B: "I just mowed the lawn and risked my life cutting that dead branch off the big tree."
A: "Why won't you help me in the garden?"
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You've met my wife?
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There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make ... sacrifices
Wife: Huh? There's no double standard here. Just fix it up or you won't have dinner or sex for a week or four. Then I guess you'll have lots of time to sleep on the couch to play with your (ermm) games.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:4, Informative)
Which of you has the pussy again?
A fine post from one who claims sexism against women doesn't exist. If you're bringing genetalia into it you are sexist. If you're binging female genetalia into it, you're sexist against women.
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Funny)
earplugs.
You're absolutely right. Get the decent expanding foam ones, they block shrill frequencies right out! :D
Re: Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the noise.
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It's not hard. Put whatever you want inside one of these: http://www.fractal-design.com/... [fractal-design.com]
Technically it is not silent: in the dead of night I can tell there is a fan inside there, but I have to concentrate and it is quite indistinct. Mine has a GTX970 in it so there is no need to compromise between power and silence.
Re: (Score:3)
If you married someone who wants you to give up a hobby, you married the wrong person. The MAJORITY of video game players are adults these days.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
As a blunt but practical point, every adult woman has anatomy a guy can enjoy. The important parts are really communication, work ethic, and intelligence.
Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Get a less noisy system. How hard is that to figure out?
Get a case that has one or two 120mm or larger fans for airflow. They generate much MUCH less noise than 80mm fans and still push enough air to keep the thing chilled.
Switch CPU/GPU fans to ones that only turn on when needed, and are off while the system is at a cool idle temp.
Switch your HDD out for an SSD, and use network storage for your bulk storage. Gigabit Ethernet is ~100MB/sec and so is a rotational disk, so you're not gonna see much different in performance here (assuming your network doesn't suck)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how this thread is increasingly turning into a gender thing, when in fact this issue could come up with any roommate. Or even in reverse...
My computer's noise was driving my husband up the wall recently. So after a fair amount of pestering from him I finally armed myself with some canned air and carried the system out to the patio, opened up the case, and found... that it was fairly clean inside. All I really needed to do was clean the air intakes on the *exterior* of the case. It was that simple and took seconds. The noise level dropped considerably. It went from being all we could hear in the living room to running near-silent.
So clean the outside. If that doesn't work, open 'er up and dust. And then yeah, if that doesn't work, I think this comment above is great. Consider a case with better airflow and/or different fans. I also can't say enough good things about having your OS on a SSD -- far quieter and much quicker. I did that on my latest build and it's fantastic; well worth the trouble of reconfiguring your files.
Re: (Score:3)
As opposed to say sports?
Why is it OK to watch men beat each other up, or tackle one another, yet a (video) game is not OK? Do board games have your blessing??
How about you Grow The Fuck Up.
The _medium_ of entertainment is NOT the issue.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Came to say this. If you want a great build, include these:
An Asus Strix GTX 970 [frys.com]
A Seasonic Platinum 1050w [slickdeals.net]
A 120mm/140mm CPU cooler, at least a Hyper 212 Evo [amazon.com]
A 4xxx Intel chip
A SSD [slickdeals.net]
A case with lots of ventilation so you won't need extra fans. For maximum Wife Acceptance Factor, consider mini-ITX.
Noise? What noise? If your motherboard is willing to shut off your CPU fan at idle, you'll be at 0db (except for electrical noise). Even during heavy gaming the thing will barely make a whisper.
Need more help? SPCR has you covered. [silentpcreview.com]
Re: (Score:3)
The reason I picked it is because the Seasonics have a "hybrid fan mode" that switches off the fan entirely when below 30-50% of their rated output. Even at full load that system won't pull more than ~350W, so the fan should never turn on :)
Also, the link I gave was for a killer black friday deal; despite its high rating it's the cheapest platinum-rated PSU you'll find right now.
propagation delay (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe she needs her space (Score:5, Funny)
Get a less noisy system. How hard is that to figure out?
Married 15 years. After I had spent the money on quieter fans, it turned out she just didn't like the look of the computer in the living room, with its wires and peripherals and stuff.
Go the man cave route with an extra room (or even a closet). You get to spend the money on bigger speakers instead of quieter fans. She gets to decorate the living room to her liking, and you get major points for being so accommodating. It will come in handy later when you have kids, so you can lock out all your little ones from the Dangerous Stuff, and it's even more handy later when you can let your bigger kids play in them while you and the Mrs. enjoy some sanity time in the nice living room.
The moral of the story is: don't be poor.
I hope (Score:5, Funny)
you have a good prenup
Spare Room (Score:3, Insightful)
Alternatively, marry someone who respects your hobbies.
Re:Spare Room (Score:5, Funny)
Look, nobody normal respects gamers, and for very good reason. The best we can hope for is tolerance unless we're prepared to marry a waifu.
Personally, I found the best solution was to quit my job so I could game while my wife as at work. No muss, no fuss. The only problem comes at times like this weekend, when I played so much Far Cry 4 that I accidentally called my wife Amita.
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Me too. Here's a picture of me and the little lady on our wedding night:
http://static.giantbomb.com/up... [giantbomb.com]
She never complains that my sweet gaming rig is too loud.
And... (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you doing "gaming" in the living room? Dude, you are now MARRIED. Turn the spare bedroom into your "man cave". The living room is your wife's domain.
Re: (Score:3)
What if his wife is also a gamer?* What if there is no other suitable room? What if they feel "the living room is the wife's domain" is twaddle? What if using the large screen TV for gaming is important to them?
* disliking a very loud gaming PC is not the same as disliking all gaming PCs.
Re: (Score:3)
What if his wife is also a gamer?* What if there is no other suitable room?
If "the wife" was a gamer, she would not be bringing up the issue of the noise from the game box. Move on.
Re: (Score:3)
This whole discussion seems to have turned into an excuse for people to trot out their sex-stereotype preconceptions about the husband and wife's personalities and the nature of their relationship.
Share the game experience (Score:3)
What are you doing "gaming" in the living room? Dude, you are now MARRIED.
So plug in two USB gamepads and play video games that you both enjoy.
Propagation delay ??? (Score:5, Informative)
I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games
Eh? This sounds more like crappy cables, than anything else. Propagation delay on an extra 10-feet of cables is hardly measurable much less noticeable.
How far away is your room? (Score:3)
I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games
The signals travel at the speed of light. How far away is your room?
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Then I'd wonder why I'm not up to my ankles in electrons from having unplugged outlets all over the house.
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USB certification is 16ft 5in (5m) for bus powered USB2.0, unlimited (no certification available) for daisychained USB2.0 with hubs every 5m (I ran out of hubs after wiring an office up the kazoo, three walls 20, 30 and 15m a side), 38m (certified) USB2.0 boosted (not hubs). The hard limit is signal propagation. You can get around it if you're feeling inventive by hooking a USB endpair through a length of Cat5 STP, I've had a 75m signal run going with no issues. This WILL void all terminal equipment warrant
Re:Propagation delay ??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly - what he is seeing is caused by crappy cables forcing retransmits, not propagation delay. The signal speed in a cable is typically higher than 10% of the speed of light, so any extra delay is measured in nanoseconds.
Anyway, a more silent PC is possible. My old workstation, at work was a quite powerfull i7 (although with a moderate GPU), which often ran at full load for months on end. It was completely silent (being under the table also helped), to the point where an i3 iMac is now annoying me with how loud it is. It was an HP marketed towards the pro marked, and cost something like 1200 $ (without taxes, using my employers good deals) when I ordered it in 2012.
Re: (Score:3)
^ This ^
And the poster wonders if wireless will help?
I know /. has never been much of a technical site - but you'd think its fairly well-known by now that wifi is gonna be slower than cables...
Instead of moding your PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Find another wife.
Projector? Recommendations (Score:3)
Along the same lines, does anybody have a good recommendation for a living room projector?
It would need to be 1080p (minimum!) and quiet but otherwise anything considered.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would anyone get a projector when 60"+ TVs are much cheaper than good projector + nice screen + extra bulbs?
Re: (Score:2)
Why would anyone get a projector when 60"+ TVs are much cheaper than good projector + nice screen + extra bulbs?
Because we don't want a 60" screen in the living room where as we do have the ability to hide a projector screen in the ceiling. Currently we don't have a TV at all and want to keep it that way.
Re: (Score:2)
I think quiet wins over affordability. If there isn't anything available that is quiet and decent quality output then we go without.
Any suggestions at the higher end?
WTF ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a wife learn to read the signals
I wasn't aware that only women play these nonsensical games.
Rather than that, how about people learn how to speak their actual thoughts without playing stupid games where they have the other person try to guess what they're thinking? So many misunderstandings could be cleared up this way.
Re:WTF ? (Score:5, Funny)
If your wife is making more noise than the computer, spending money on computer parts won't solve the noise issue.
Re: (Score:3)
or maybe she could learn to fucking communicate like an adult? How about understanding that he won't always be on her wavelength just as she won't always be on his? Why do we excuse anti-social behavior in women while demonizing it in men?
Re: (Score:3)
Based on the fear mongering tripe put out there by feminists,
In only two posts, you've managed to go from a guy solociting quiet PC advice since his wife objects to the machine he freely describes as a noisy behemoth, to an anti-feminist rant. That's sort of impressive in the same way that time cube is sort of impressive.
They're told to by their fathers (if they're even still allowed to see their kids) and by feminism in school and in media, so as adults, they walk a fine line between being too submissive
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're doomed :-( (Score:3)
Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.
Just buy a flat-screen already. The picture is better than you'll get with a projector, you won't have to worry about people walking in front of it and casting a shadow on the screen, and really, a flatscreen by itself looks so much better than a projector and motorized screen hanging from the ceiling - and can be moved a lot easier when re-arranging the room. Projectors are so '90s.
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Spare room. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just do your gaming in the spare room. Put a small quiet/silent PC in the living room for media centre stuff if you cannot live without a living room PC.
Also, I'd have to advise against replacing the TV with a projector. They're hellishly expensive if you get one with decent resolution, require a pitch black room to look any good, effectively prevent rearranging the living room, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
There is then the option of a small living room PC (deemed as "HTPC" though an old Pentium III tower can be a quiet HTPC if it's just for movies and music) and the gaming crap may have say a GTX 970 - because it can stream in H265, do that on gig wired ethernet. Steam running on the small client PC is crap made for thin-clienting a bigger gaming PC (Valve made noise about "steam boxes" whereas nvidia calls it shadowplay. In the end there's nvidia lock-in in there)
Steam Big Picture (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't this supposed to be what steam big picture is for. Playing games on your television in another room from you computer?
If the literature is correct, that would just make this ask slashdot just another slashavedisment .
Ob (Score:3, Funny)
Have you tried putting her in a cabinet?
lag ? (Score:2)
but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag
Propagation delay is less than 1 nanosecond per feet. You must have really well trained senses if you can detect that.
Get A Silent Elegant Case (Score:3, Informative)
I build home systems sometimes for clients, and the Wife Factor is frequently the most critical aspect. This has been true since I started in 1985, but is more true now as computers have become essential to so many households.
In my experience, the Fractal Design cases (e.g, the Define R4) have two wife-pleasing qualities:
(1) They are simple, elegant, unadorned museum quality sculpture-like mini-monoliths; and
(2) They are literally almost completely silent. I don't mean merely quiet, I mean you cannot tell whether the system is on or off. This is with fans, not water cooling.
Understand that this may not solve your real problem, which may be the mere presence of the machine in the living room. What it will do is force an honest exposure of the real issue, and besides that you'll still have a great case you can migrate components into and out of for years and years. Also it means you don't need a new rig, just new clothes for for the rig you already have.
Note that I do not have any relationship with that company aside from buying their cases for some system builds where they fit best. I will say that they are superbly designed inside, and the designers obviously build systems themselves. You'll know what I mean if you get one.
Re: (Score:2)
My Corsairs Carbide 350r case has also resulted in a near-silent system. There's an SSD in there, but also two HDDs, and they used to make a horrible racket in the old case (I could feel a 'beat' between their vibrations in my desk, with the only physical connection being through the floor!). The difference? The new case has vibration-dampening mounts, and it seems like they do an excellent job.
Also I decided not to go with Intel stock CPU cooler this time, instead using a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo.
Um (Score:2)
a) Longer HDMI and USB cables should not create a propagation delay, unless you are using repeaters. Get the unit at close enough that you can get away without repeaters.
Seriously, electricity propagates through copper at ~2/3rd the speed of light. You are NOT noticing the nanoseconds from an extra 10 feet of cable.
b) Water cooling. Don't fear it. If noise is the issue switch to water cooling. Its not hard at all for the CPU and graphics card. And good near silent power supplies aren't hard to fine.
Fanless is possible (Score:2)
I've been using fanless machines for ages. Basically, you use heatpipes to the case. QuietPC.com are extremely helpful - I have a system with a Streacom FC9 case which is big enough for a high-end CPU, but still dead silent. Of course, if you want the ultimate in graphics cards, you may still have to put up with a fan.
Also, signals travel along cables at about 2/3 speed of light - so your mere cable length shouldn't be a problem. HTH
silentpcreview.com (Score:2)
silentpcreview.com is a web site dedicated to quiet and silent computing, with extensive reviews and forums. They have very recently posted a sample build of a quiet gaming PC [silentpcreview.com].
You can take that as a base and adjust according to taste. (For example, I'm more obsessed by quiet and less by frames per second, so my gaming PC has a single GTX760Ti GPU.) If you have questions, take them to the forums.
Drop the watts (Score:2)
Drop the watts and/or have more and bigger fans, you have noise because you wanted it (200W to 300W GPU). Get a GM107 GPU for instance, the board only uses around 65 watts max (and is around GTX 470 or GTX 480 graphics power)
Go on with your plan about displays.. Use a 1080p 27" or 28" PC 1080p PC display as a "TV" : with the best you can find (very low black levels, very low or none input lag, and calilbrated colors with either a downloaded profile or a probe) it's better than a TV and "small' like a big CR
Have you considered... (Score:2)
...upgrading your wife to a more compatible model?
Alternatively, get a big case with lots of slow fans. I built an i7-3930k and 2x GTX680 4 gig gaming rig a couple years ago and I can barely hear it. I've got those ugly, yellow SilenX Effizio fans. Around 12dBA moving around 45cfm. A reasonable person couldn't complain about the noise it makes. I can hear my wall clock ticking from across the room. The GPU fans crank up while I'm gaming but you can't hear that over the sound of the game. Or go with l
Who likes loud PCs? Here is a solution with photos (Score:2)
I hate loud PCs as well. Who wants to listen to fans run?
1. Find a Thermaltake case DH101 DH202, remove the bracket that runs front to back, it just gets in the way. I found mine on Craigslist.
2. Put in a quiet/silent PSU.
3. Put a short Zallman heat sink on your CPU with heat pipes with a 120mm fan on top.
4. Replace all your drives with SSDs, put noisy drives on the network, get a Western Digital My Cloud 4TB and wire it to ethernet for your PLEX library.
5. If the fan on the GPU is loud, get a bigger fan 1
Go Mini ITX (Score:2)
Why did you get married? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're freshly married. (Score:2)
Your game machine has to go where the full size stormtrooper, R2D2 and your pornstash went when you got married..
Buy an iPad or get divorced.
Put quiet fans in. (Score:2)
Put quiet fans in. Noctua are the probably the best large fans - for use as CPU, PSU and case fans mostly, my Noctua fans have been going for many years now. I had a heatsink so big on my previous 95W quad core that it didn't even need a fan!
Video cards can also be adapted to take quiet fans but that's not always easy. Either replace the PSU fan or the PSU.
CPU and GPU fans thresholds can usually be altered to make them quieter when idling. (sometimes via the BIOS menu).
See sites like http://www.quietpc.com/ [quietpc.com]
This is a top cause of divorce (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a top cause of divorce (Score:4, Informative)
Are you married or have you ever been in a long term relationship?
You don't need to spend every single moment with your significant other in order to have a healthy relationship. In fact, it is usually a good idea to have some individual hobbies. Maybe his wife wants him out of the TV room, so she can watch America's Next Top Model in peace.
Re:This is a top cause of divorce (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you married or have you ever been in a long term relationship?
I have been married for a number of years, thank you much. I have also seen a number of other marriages collapse due to one or both partners trying to continue their pre-married lives after getting married. It doesn't work like that.
You don't need to spend every single moment with your significant other in order to have a healthy relationship.
I didn't say that you do. However if someone doesn't make an effort to be available to the other partner the time between the altar and divorce court will likely not be long.
Just get a new case (Score:3)
So find a case designed for silence from a manufacturer you trust, and put the system in there along with some larger, quieter fans. Do this and you've solved both the loud and the ugly.
large and slow fans on case plus air ducts (Score:3)
I had similar problem. ;-)
I am pretty sure you are going to find this post at the end of the thread after slogging through all those helpful posts suggesting that you show your wife who is the boss
I had similar problems (with computer, not with my fantastic wife!) some time ago and I have solved them by cutting several large holes in the side of the case, installing large fans (12 volt versions, I ran them at slightly lower voltage) and installing a cardboard ducts that directed the airflow directly to the graphics card and to the processor cooler. Take care to provide also air outlets to keep up with large fans blowing in. The best way to let the majority of the air out is through the power source.
I was also able to run those [multiple] large fans off 7V that I got by connecting them between 12V and 5V lead on a power source. Be careful, "your mileage might vary" and your power source might not like being used this way. This was suggested to me by a computer technician that works for the same company I do.
It also helps processor has heat-pipe cooler. Heat-pipe is a copper pipe filled with a liquid and sealed tight, with no external means to circulate liquid. They are used extensively in notebooks and luxury coolers. It works because liquid has better heat conducting properties than copper. Pay attention to the orientation of the cooler suggested by manufacturers - some of them are said to work only in horizontal / vertical position and not upside-down.
Consider getting an SSD. Much quieter than a HDD and you might get computer that feels actually faster even if you under-clock your processor.
Consider replacing small cooler with fan on a chipset [if you have one] with a much larger [passive] heat dissipating cooler. Combine with a large 12V fan fed by 7V or PWM power source blowing on it through cardboard air duct.
Consider building / buying a small PWM power source with variable output that is powered by 12V from PC. I believe those are available commercially for modders, complete with thermal sensors, but building one (without thermal regulation) can be a fun little Sunday project. The PWM source then powers your fans, so they spin fast enough to cool your PC and slow enough not to make much noise. You turn it all the way up before serious gaming session.
Consider under-clocking your processor AND graphics cards when you do not play on your PC.
I have recently purchased a notebook as a replacement of my big rig that had many of the above mentioned enhancements. I bought a notebook, because I was visiting USA and I wanted to buy a better computer there during Black Friday and I strongly disliked the idea of packing a regular desktop PC inside a big checked-in suitcase. So I had to purchase something that I could take with me alongside a company-issued notebook. I had a *strong* case of buyers remorse. Now I can't improve my computer anymore. No installing extra stuff, getting a second disk (large SSD) was complicated and I had to give up [internal] DVD drive. On the other hand, notebook *is* much quieter, especially with an SSD. ;-).
So, if you like to tinker with your big rig, like I did, do not make the same mistake. - Unless you are filthy rich and can afford an alienware or similar notebook
Would Parallels running on the newest 4k iMac be powerful enough for your games? [evil grin ;-)]
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Re:No Way Out (Score:5, Informative)
I don't like noisy PCs either and there a couple of solutions:
a) Use a low-RPM, huge, CPU fan like Zalman along with a fanless power supply and video card. There should be very little noise from such a PC.
b) Go all the way and buy a water-cooled PC [digitaltrends.com]. No fans, no noise.
c) Buy an Apple laptop/desktop. These are noiseless except under heavy load.
Re:No Way Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Noisy PC, erm yeah right. This is all about "pay more attention to me, Me, ME" and that gaming computer is just the first target.
So with the claim of a noisy computer the response is either get the significant other gaming or you just might have made a huge mistake. A quieter computer is bound to turn into an ugly computer that doesn't match the other furnishings or the screen is to bright and distracts from viewing the idiot box or you are a child for playing computer games and should just grow up or, well, you get the idea.
Re:Headphones? (Score:5, Funny)
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she will indeed sleep in a separate bed
Yes, In a separate bed. In a separate house. With a new boyfriend.
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How about you actually grow the hell up and realize that something being fun to you is what matters, and not your age?
Say it again and you're liable to get kilt (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just measured (it's on an UPS): It's using a little over 400W at top effect (Valley benchmark). It peaks at only 55 degrees water temperature.
An alternative solution is of course steam stream [steampowered.com]. I'm surprised noone mentioned this. Then a NUC [intel.com] or so in the livingroom would be enough.
Re:Stop gaming. (Score:5, Informative)
Source: Divorced due to Eve-online.
To be fair that's not 'gaming' eve is essentially a second career but without any of the real life rewards for your efforts.