Feedback On My Build

minipcnewbie

New member
Hi all - great community you have here. I'm a total newbie and I'd appreciate some feedback on my build below. My requirements are that it is silent (I hate fans), very fast and small form factor. My day to day use is fairly light office applications, browsing and youtube but I want the power there for the odd occasion I decide to do photo/video editing, development work or the occasional game of civilisation. Am I right in thinking that the GPU and serious noise will only kick in when the machine is under strain and that day to day youtube and office will not require the fans at all?

Case
FRACTAL DESIGN NODE 304 Mini ITX Case

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-7700 (3.6GHz) 8MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® Z170I PRO GAMING: Mini-ITX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs

Memory (RAM)
32GB Kingston DUAL DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 16GB)

Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
FREE FOR HONOR or GHOST RECON: WILDLANDS with select GTX 10 Series GPUs!

1st Hard Disk
2TB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 3.5" SSHD, 7200 RPM (64MB + 8GB SSD CACHE)

M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 600p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (upto 1800MB/sR | 560MB/sW)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED

Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 POWER SUPPLY

Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER

Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN PORT + Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi excluded on H110I-PLUS)

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
 

Stephen M

Author Level
I would consider changinf your drives, the Samsung m2 is a better drive than the Intel plus the hybrids are not up to much, as you will already have an SSD a 7200rpm drive will be fine. If only phot and video editing occasionally 16GB RAM would be enough and in a small case i would probably go for the better Thermal past.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
In addition to the above, all of which I agree with:

Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER

You will want at least the Noctua cooler. It would be much quieter and somewhat more effective than the stock intel one.

The build shouldn't be terribly loud on idle, but bear in mind that with a mini ITX build the GPU is fed air by having its fan(s) put up along a mesh vent on the side of the case. So unlike a desktop PC case like the Fractal R5, you don't have sound-dampening material to help reduce the noise between you and the GPU.

and that day to day youtube and office will not require the fans at all?
If you mean the machine in general, the case fans will always be running. The CPU fan will always be running to some degree, though on low load that should be quite quiet.

With some designs of GPU, the fans would spin down on idle, generally when the card is under 60 degrees. However, some designs of GPU (mostly those with blower coolers) will not switch off on idle. They'll run slower ofc, but not actually turn off.

This might make it sound like a blower cooler is a worse option for you than an open air one, however with a mini ITX build the blower coolers are often preferable as they exhaust heat out the back of the GPU/case rather than washing it about the insides.
 
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