Quiet PC Nofan A480 Silent Desktop

Ordered with i7 4770K, Nofan CR-95C Cooler, 32GB Ram, and the Aurum 500W PSU. Bought as a gaming rig.

Added my own hard disks (4x SSD), and graphics card (780 GTX Ti SC ACX).

Predictably… the only thing I can hear are the graphics card fans. Running temperatures for general usage is around 29°C on processor, although I have managed to push this to alarm point of 70°C after 4 hours of Farcry 3. I did have concerns that the proximity of the large copper cooler to the pcie x16 slot on the GA-787X-UD4H motherboard would impact on the effective cooling of the graphics card, but haven’t found this to be the case - hottest I have had the graphics card is around 60°C at heavy load.

The case itself has 2x grommets for feeding pipework for an external radiator on the rear, which isn’t mentioned anywhere… but will come in handy should I wish to silence my now (in relative terms anyway…) noisy graphics card with a water cooling block (if I don’t mount it internally anyway… probably have room for that too).

Slot 5 of the easy swap drive arrays wasn’t connected by default, which I did myself (5th SSD), and highlighted to me the tidy cabling done by quietpc, very neat indeed!

SSD’s pull around half a watt of power each, processor 84W, and graphics card 250W at max load, so well within the limits of the PSU (although nVidia suggest 600W minimum for a 780 GTX Ti).

Not running with any overclocking or similar, but I’m not against the idea of it, will be interesting to see how the memory and cpu cooler handle it.

This machine replaces my last QuietPC.com machine (a TNN500AF) and is exceptional. It is a high spec workstation machine which is completely silent making it a complete pleasure to work on. The service and support from QPC during the ordering process was great (thanks Ellen!). In summary its a fantastic piece of kit put together by an excellent company.

Amazing desktop - had a few and this is by far the best, not only because it is virtually silent, but because the choice of components really do work well together. My choice of hard disk drive, as opposed to SSD, means a tiny amount of noise and also results in a lower ‘Windows Experience’ score (a nonsense measurement anyway!), but the PC boots fast and easily handles Office 365, IE, flash videos etc (using just Intel graphics). I really can’t tell that it’s on most of the time and the passive cooling genuinely works - the i7 processor (65w) rarely heats above 45 degrees and the Nofan case copes well with whatever heat is produced. Service from QuietPC was top class - machine was built in a couple of days and delivery was ridiculously inexpensive. Yes, you may well be paying a little over the top compared with some other, dubious, retailers, but the build quality is excellent - cables tidied up, all spare bits and bobs packed in the motherboard box and no bloat ware! I would not hesitate to recommend this PC, and the people who put it together :-), to prospective buyers.

UPDATE:

I have had this PC for several weeks now - enough to know it’s merits in greater detail - so I thought it might help to add this update :-)

All good! I have added a SSD (Samsung pro 128gb) and would recommend people to do this as it really does speed the system up. I use this drive just for desktop files and system files, switching everything else to the WD hard disk installed by QPC (it is very quiet and cool running, btw). Literally not a whisper comes from the PC - completely silent. I listen to music through this PC and I have never once noticed any extraneous noises from it - even in hushed passages of music. Everything inside the NOFAN PC remains cool - the hard drives (three in total) seldom go above 35C and the CPU only touches 50C to 60C when extremely pushed (which is rare, given the power of the i7 processor). I am also happy I put 16GB of ram in the PC - this leaves plenty of headroom. After tweaking Windows 8 to cut down on unnecessary processes, I have managed to get minimal latency in the system such that FLAC 96 KHz and 192 KHz files are delivered, through USB, to my DAC with little delay and only occasional ‘hiccups’ due to me carrying out more intensive processes on the PC (e.g. graphics editing). I would thoroughly recommend this PC as the core of a high quality music system. All in all, an outstanding product - thank you very much, QuietPC :-)

I loaded it with extras taking full advantage of the advice of Andy the technical manager of Quiet PC to learn it is possible to have 5 3.5” disks (mine are a pair of 128GB Samsung EVO Pro’s in RAID1 and three 256GB Samsung EVO Pro’s as RAID5). I’m a storage hound so have another pair of RAID1 WD30EZRX Caviar Green Quiet SATA in a pair of Smart Drive Classic SATA HDD Silencers - quiet no silent yes, completely. Given that I’ve a 35W i7 is outstanding and when you consider I chose to pair it with an AMD HD7750 DirectCU Fanless Graphics Card is to say the least very surprising. Does it get warm? yes but only over the rear vent over the cooler and not distressingly so.

I am very rarely moved to write reviews but this is one of the few occasions where I feel the need to put fingers to keyboard. This is the first silent PC I have purchased from QuietPC but it won’t be the last. I have purchased so-called silent machines from other suppliers before but this is the first one that really is silent. So much so that I actually thought the machine was broken the first time I started it up. It is really fast too. The service I had from Ellen in Sales was also first class. She was really helpful and a significant reason why I have recommended QuietPC to my son who is another IT techie. I haven’t had any reason to call upon QuietPC’s tech support yet and I have no reason to believe I will need to do so, but if their service is as good as that of Ellen’s, then QuietPC certainly have the complete package that will keep me going back to them.

The PC is powerful, fast and completely silent. “Clean build” is such a worthwhile offer: the machine is actually usable out of the box. Couldn’t be happier and will be a repeat customer. Really good business to deal with, too. Competent and friendly.