The Quietest (Powerful) Computer In The World

Listen carefully to the sound your computer is making right now. Noisy? Most computers make noise, but we found one that’s tremendously powerful, yet it’s so quiet we couldn’t tell it was running.

I can’t stand constant, droning noise. It’s distracting, stressful, and it might even make you sick. One day I got fed up with the constant fan noise from my PC, I searched for a new machine that would be completely quiet. Little did I realize that there’s an Internet subculture devoted to silent PCs, and one of its proponents is the Silent PC Review (SPCR).

The site has a special section of “SPCR Certified Silent PCs,” and the most silent computer those connoisseurs of quiet have ever found is a tower PC made by boutique computer assembler Puget Systems. The SPCR site calls Puget’s Serenity PC “the quietest computer system we have ever reviewed or even laid hands on, and probably quieter than any PC will ever be, short of one with no moving parts and zero electronic noise.” Concerned that Puget Systems is also one of the sponsors of that SPCR site, I vowed to test this quiet PC myself, and see if it lives up to its billing.

When I contacted Puget Systems in hopes of testing such a silent system, its CEO told me he’s just put together a smaller system he calls the Serenity Mini that’s even quieter than its full-sized brother. In an anechoic chamber, the Serenity PC measured a super-quiet 11dB, and Puget says this mini system is 1dB quieter, at 10dB. I had to check this out. A few days later, the Serenity Mini arrived, with its “mini-tower” case that’s by no means miniature, measuring about 17″ tall.
The object of this exercise was to find a PC with the fastest processors and finest components inside that can still scream without making a single sound. Of course, you can find other solid-state and fanless PCs with laptop processors inside that might match the quietude of these “silent PCs,” but you’d be missing out on all the power of Intel’s latest second-generation Core i7 tech embodied in its “Sandy Bridge” processing platform. So I tested a loaded PC with 8GB of RAM, a solid-state drive and the fastest Core i7 quad-core chip on board.

When I first fired up this Serenity Mini, I quickly realized that Silent PC Review wasn’t kidding. Even when I transformed our Midwest Test Facility into a completely silent environment by shutting down everything that makes even the slightest noise, including the refrigerator and the heating system, I still could not hear a peep emanating from of this PC.

How is this done? First of all, there’s that solid-state hard drive inside that makes no sound. There’s an almost equally quiet 1.5TB Caviar Green hard drive by Western Digital, a fanless PowerColor Radeon HD 5750 1GB graphics card, super-quiet Gelid Tranquillo CPU cooling , a Seasonic X-560 power supply that’s nearly silent, an Antec Mini P180 case, and then AcoustiPack foam padding lining the inside of the case. The result? State-of-the-art power with nearly complete silence.

Just how state-of-the-art is this power? Its quad-core Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4GHz chip is the fastest Sandy Bridge processor available at this writing, and it scored 6.86 points on the cross-platform Maxon Cinebench Benchmark 11.5. While no match for the two six-core Intel Xeon Westmere EP X5680 3.33GHz processors inside that Z800 workstation (which scored 16.22 points on that same Cinebench 11.5 benchmark), it held its own with its single quad-core chip.
By the way, Puget acknowledged the recent complaints of bugs in the “6 series” chipset associated with the Sandy Bridge processing platform, and says that all its PCs will be equipped with the modified chipset that Intel will be releasing soon.

Now you’re probably wondering, what’s the damage for such an unusually quiet and powerful machine? Puget is selling this one as tested for $2327, or if you’re a computer assembly expert and won’t need any help, you could put together this same group of components for a significantly lower price.
And now for the bottom line: How quiet is this machine compared with that 12-core workstation, an everyday laptop, and an exceptionally quiet PC? The difference is noticeable. To measure the difference between the sound output of each machine, I used a $.99 iPhone app called Decibel, with my iPhone positioned precisely 1 foot away from each machine. Granted, it’s not as completely scientific as the Silent PC Report’s measurements in an anechoic chamber, but for the purposes of comparison it will give you an idea of what I mean by silence:


Find a list of components used in this churchmouse-quiet PC:

Serenity Mini by Puget Systems

Motherboard: Asus P8H67-M EVO
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K Quad Core 3.4GHz 95W
RAM: Kingston 8GB DDR3-1333 (2x4GB)
Graphics Card: PowerColor Radeon HD5750 1GB Silent
Primary Drive: Intel X25-M 34nm Gen 2 120GB SATA II 2.5inch SSD
Secondary Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB
CD/DVD: ASUS 12x Blu-ray Burner Lightscribe SATA (black) w/ Software
Removable drive: ATech PRO-35U USB 2.0 Internal/External Card Reader
Case: Antec Mini P180 (Black)
Power Supply: Seasonic X-560 (SS-560KM Active PFC F3)
CPU Cooling: Gelid Tranquillo, Scythe fans
Case Mods: Antec Mini P180 Serenity Quiet Modification Package, AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package, Tuniq TX-4 Thermal Compound
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM


Price: $2327.58