Silent PC Operation, CPU Fan or Watercooled

Hi I'm looking for a bit of advice, does anyone know if watercooled systems operate quieter than with a CPU fan?

I'm currently looking to purchase the following spec pc (See Below), anyone know if it will provide silent operation? It will run Exchange Server, along with a number of websites hopefully using Hyper-V.


Case FRACTAL DEFINE R6 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor i7-7700 (3.6GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® Z270 WS - ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6 GB/s,
Memory (RAM) 64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2133MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st Hard Disk 250GB Samsung 860 2.5" EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 250GB Samsung 860 2.5" EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive 500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 2300MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN (2 PORTS ON WS MOTHERBOARDS)
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Thanks any advice would be greatly appreciated!

The Noctua will be quieter than other CPU coolers on offer at PCS.

If silent is the order of the day, then go with an RMx series PSU as these are semi-passive.

You should also go with an i7 8700 on the Z370 platform https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-z370-pc/ (or an AMD R5/R7) as these offer better multithreaded performance for a similar price. The 8700 is the straight replacement for the 7700. In fact, the 6th Gen i5s like the 8500 offer pretty much the same multithreaded performance as the 7th Gen i7s, as although they lack hyperthreading they have 2 more physical cores.

Thanks for your reply.

Would you or anyone else be able to recommend me a spec which would offer me best value for money? budget is around 2k.

Things which are a must are

- 2 NIC's
- Silent Operation
- Enough RAM to run Exchange Server 2016 + 3 Additional Windows Server VM ideally 64GB
- Must be Intel

Thanks

Dan

Anyone needing to know, the specs for Exchange 2016 are here:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com...he-perf-guy-sizing-exchange-2016-deployments/

They are quite fluid depending on things like number of messages sent/received.

Assuming Server 2016, you can get away with 2GB RAM for a domain controller (assume this is one of your VM's?).

Which hypervisor do you.plan on using? I'd consider Hyper-v and use it's dynamic RAM capabilities.

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your reply, currently have and plan to use in the future Hyper-V for this setup, ideally would have 4GB ram for domain controller.

Probably be around 50 messages sent/received per day.

Thanks Dan

So you don't need it massively performant.

I'd be tempted to add a SATA HDD. The IOP requirements for Exchange 2016 are far lower than previous versions and the databases can sit happily on large capacity SATA, even in production systems (RAID'ed of course)