How to Build an Energy-Efficient and Quiet Gaming PC - graysmang1975

Are you a gamer with a big electricity bill every month? Are you looking to build a great gaming PC that doesn't sound the likes of a jet engine every time you set forth playing Diablo III? This chassis guide is for you.

Imagine a Personal computer that will hit 60 frames per second running most games on today's 1080p displays. Now imagine that system idling at below 70 watts. Even under the heaviest load up, information technology consumes just 336 watts. That's 336 watts generated when the system is functional an eight-core instance of Prime 95 while simultaneously running 3DMark 2011 at 2560 by 1600 firmness of purpose with 8x antialiasing on–a far heavier lading than most games will raise.

Better yet, this system makes few compromises in terms of general operation. It runs the latest LGA 2011 hardware, including a quad-core Sandy Bridge Extreme CPU. Information technology has 16GB of RAM, too, and a efficacious current-generation graphics card.

Let's go on a tour of the system first. Later I'll dig into the component choices to show you how I built a killer system that's fairly cat valium. Click along any picture to zoom in for well-lined details, then click the remaining and right arrows to front through with the photos.

Minimalist looks, minimal power usage, excellent performance.

It isn't much to view, certainly, just that's function of its charm. The case is a Corsair Obsidian 550D midsize-tower chassis. Oblation most of the amenities of high-end cases, IT's also designed to minimize noise. The front cover hides the sense modality drive, but its real purpose is to avail baffle resound.

In addition to creating a foremost that's satiny and minimalist, the 550D has foam for deadening noise.

This gambling machine isn't just well-off on your galvanising charge, IT's also remarkably quiet thanks to some simple soundproofing. Though you can't see it in these pictures, the heavy foam material lining the front cover also lines the cardinal face panels.

Sense modality drives are rarely in take these years, only they still come in handy now and again.

With the Personal computer's front cover removed, you can see the optical drive snuggled near the top of the tower. These days I download almost of my games, but I threw in a Blu-ray combo drive–a Blu-beam of light reader plus a DVD burner–for the unusual DVD-based unfit as well as the occasional high-definition movie. The Corsair case is besides a nice choice because IT amply supports internal USB 3.0 connections for the front-panel USB ports. The exponent and reset buttons rest exposed even when the cover is installed.

Like most current-generation systems, this political machine has plenty of stimulant/output options, including lots of USB 3.0 ports, eSATA support, deuce flavors of digital audio outputs, gigabit ethernet, and multichannel linear audio. IT even off sports a PS/2 keyboard connector for hard-center gamers WHO want to use PS/2 keyboards resourceful of supporting overloaded keystrokes.

No more lack of I/O in that system. And that punt panel adds a splash of color, too.

Like most of Corsair's cases, the 550D has plenty of room under the motherboard tray to road power and former cables.

Yes, I could accept dressed to the nines the cables a pocketable more neatly. But who's going to reckon them?

System Performance

At once that you've had a brief tour of the system, it's meter to talk performance. Although this motorcar is built to run PC games at high frame rates, IT's also not a bad all-round performer, and it posted great results in our PCMark 7 and 3DMark testing regimen. Some benchmarking utilities offer simplified versions that are free to download, so grab a copy of apiece and run your have tests to watch how your PC stacks up against our power-sipping gaming machine.

Benchmark	Result
PCMark 7 score	4625
PCMark 7 depot score	4781
3DMark 2011 (Performance)	9270
3DMark Advantage (Performance)	30,058
Shogun 2, frames per second	35
Grunge 3, FPS	105
Far Shout 2, fps	154
Tube 2033 (4x AA), FPS	26
Metro 2033 (AA off), fps	33
Stalker: Call of Pripyat, fps	86.5
Batman: Arkham City, fps	62
Cinebench 11.5 (CPU), score	7.15
Cinebench 11.5 (GPU), fps	52
Mainconcept 2.2, seconds (Federal Protective Service)	559 seconds (136 fps)

For reference, we ran entirely the games at 1920 by 1200 resolution, with all detail levels completely maxed out and 4x multisampling antialiasing enabled. The Mainconcept run transcoded a 4.3GB high-definition video file from 1080p MPEG-2 to H.264 iPhone (304MB inalterable size).

These public presentation numbers are quite good, coming within a couple of portion points of a system of rules running a Core i7-3960X CPU. Yet our PC idles at just 69W, importantly depress than the major power usance of most gaming PCs (which pull hundreds of watts out of your release). What's inside this box? Let's have a look.

Next Pageboy: Components and Toll

Inside the Corner

Before expiration finished the components, let's take a peek indoors the finished PC.

A really fast GPU, sealed liquid cooling, and an interesting power ply…

It's All Nearly Power

The key to the power efficiency of this system was selecting the right power supply. Nonpareil important aspect of the decision was my dead lack of hope for a second GPU. Instead, I wanted a single, high-performance nontextual matter card that could handle almost anything I threw at it.

Freeing myself from the pauperization for a second GPU allowed Maine to pick a top executive supply with vindicatory two PCI State graphics connectors. That power supply is the Antec Earthwatts Platinum 650W unit, which is 80 Plus Platinum certified. A baron supply that's 80 Plus Platinum registered must maintain close to 90 percentage efficiency throughout its range, even subordinate load and idle extremes.

Antec's extremely efficient Earthwatts Platinum 650W power supply.

The upside is depressed maximum power consumption and high efficiency. The downside is that we have only two PCI Express mightiness connectors and a lack of modularity–all existing power connectors are permanently attached. If you need more power for a endorse GPU, a great secondary is Seasonic's Platinum 860W power supply, but that would set you back $220 instead of the Antec's $120 cost.

Nvidia Finally Gets Power Efficiency

Maybe it's all the effort Nvidia has been disbursement late on building throaty-world power processors for mobile devices. Operating theater perchance the company just got tired of having low-electrical power sand kicked in its face past AMD. Whatever the reason, Nvidia's modish lofty-end GPU, the GeForce GTX 680, is a power-sipping prodigy. The Asus-proprietary GTX 680 batting order I selected requires two six-pin power connectors, something unhearable of in a flagship graphics card.

An Nvidia GTX 680 from Asus. Information technology's efficient. It's accelerated. And it supports four monitors.

Nvidia also invested with the GTX 680 with the ability to support four displays; I currently have one gushing three 30-inch panels on my desktop, which gives me a total of 12 megapixels of screen factual estate. Trust me, that's a lot of windows.

The GTX 680 is certainly faster than AMD's flagship Radeon HD 7970, but it's also smaller, quieter, and tank. The 1536 GPU cores translate into good performance in modern PC games. Eve a big performance grunter such as Metro 2033 reaches finished 30 frames per secondment at 1920 by 1200 screen settlement. Mayhap more representative is the 62 Federal Protective Service we saw in Batman: Arkham City at 1920 by 1200, with maximum contingent levels and 4x multisampling antialiasing enabled.

The Processor-Motherboard-Memory Trigon

I wanted a program that offered growth potential without sacrificing performance. That meant LGA 2011, which supports huge memory bandwidth and Intel's top-of-the-crinkle CPUs. On the other hand, I didn't deficiency to break through the bank, and so I opted for the lowest-cost LGA 2011 CPU: the quad-gist Core i7-3820. IT has 10MB of L3 cache, a quad-channel DDR3 memory controller, and Hyper-Threading sustain. It includes a staggering 40 PCI Convey lanes, making it suitable for multi-GPU setups, if you so want. Oblation a base clock of 3.6GHz and a maximum Turbo Boost speed of 3.8GHz, it's no performance slouch. The deuce additional cores that ship with the pricier 3920K and 3960X CPUs won't add much to gaming operation, either.

The underlying motherboard program is the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 control panel, settled connected Intel's X79 chipset. Information technology's one of the more power-efficient X79 boards available.

Gigabyte's lowest-cost X79 board offers plenty of I/O. Its one "limitation": quaternity computer memory sockets.

A good motherboard and CPU involve good memory, but I also wanted competent memory. Capital of Jamaica supplied us with a pair of 8GB HyperX LoVo memory kits. They're capable of running at 1600MHz while sipping fair-minded 1.5V (instead of the usual 1.65V), but I kept them at the nonpayment 1333MHz. After all, with quaternity memory channels available, there's No want of memory bandwidth.

HyperX LoVo is in truth fast storage that runs at just 1.5 volts.

I old Corsair's H60 sealed tearful Central processor cooling system, which you can see in the open-case pic above. A closed liquid cooler offers a lower visibility than big ventilate coolers answer, indeed it improves gross air flow while maintaining a sub-40 degrees Celsius idle CPU temperature.

Computer storage

Neediness fast storage or lots of storage? How about some? Iron boot drive on this system is a 250GB Intel 510 Series solid-state get.

The Intel 510 250GB ram is plenty fast–and reliable, too.

The secondary cause is a two-platter, WD1002 FAEX hard drive, which offers enough storage for substance abuser information folders.

Prices are gradually start to fall on rotating media so much as this Western Digital WD1002 FAEX granitelike movement. Gradually.

Note that the optical drive I used in this radical-quiet and energy-efficient gaming PC is Asus's in style Blu-ray combo drive, the BC-12B1ST. At under $60, information technology's not much pricier than standard Videodisc drives.

For the operational system of rules, I'm exploitation Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit), but Windows 7 Professional would do just as well. These years I avoid Windows 7 Menage Bounty collectible to its 16GB memory limitation.

Be and Alternatives

This system is efficient and relatively quiet, and it offers good potential for prox expansion–but it is a high-end system. Let's see how it prices out.

Component	Price
Intel Core i7-3820 CPU	$310
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 X79 motherboard	$240
16GB Kingston HyperX LoVo DDR3-1600 RAM (cardinal 8GB kits)	$118
Asus GTX680-2D5 graphics card (2GB GDDR5)	$530
Corsair Obsidian 550D PC chassis	$130
Antec Earthwatts Platinum 650W power supply	$120
Barbary pirate H60 irrevocable liquid CPU cooler	$65
Intel 510 Serial publication 250GB solid drive	$520
Western Digital WD1002 FAEX effortful campaign	$140
Asus BC-12B1ST Blu-ray combo drive	$58
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate OEM	$190
Total	$2421

In the end, what we have is a high-end gaming rig with lots of RAM, a superior graphics board, an SSD boot drive, and plenty of inferior storage. If I wanted a turn down-cost system, I might go with one of the new Ivy Bridge CPUs, although I'd get to wait a few weeks until they became more widely available. The Core i7-3770K will likely cost a a couple of dollars more, but a motherboard supported on the Z77 chipset will monetary value to a lesser degree an X79 motherboard.

If you're using Ivy Bridge, you could buy just 8GB of Jampack, which would cut memory costs in incomplete. I'd keep the 1TB Western Digital hard drive, just replace the Intel 510 with a much smaller, turn down-price SSD that could play a rattling fast hard-drive cache exploitation Intel's SmartResponse engineering science. Storage costs would credibly be Thomas More like $270 as an alternative of $660. The sum cost of the hypothetical Ivy Bridge system would drop down below the $2K stigma.

One new viable change: Nontextual matter cards based on Nvidia's GTX 680 GPU are in short cater currently, but you can easily feel an AMD Radeon HD 7970 for about $480. It's nearly as fast and fair-and-square a tad noisier, and it consumes only a little much power.

Still, I'd be unwilling to stop this nifty LGA 2011 system. LGA 2011 bequeath live on the far side the current Loose Bridge Extremum and back a future Ivy Bridge deck-based CPU, and so it still has several growth potential. And regular if LGA 2011 never sees an upgrade, it should handle today's PC games and future titles with cool. Build it into a system so much as the one shown Hera, and you pot play games at whatever hour of the day or night without waking relatives or roommates, or racking up a Brobdingnagian electricity bill. Good portio!