Building a Completely Passively Cooled and Silent Gaming PC: A Journey to Overcoming Thermal Challenges

In this recent video, I built a completely passively cooled and silent gaming PC in Street Cones at db4. While we did end up opting for a lower power solution that I had hoped for in the beginning, it was definitely the quietest system that I had ever built. However, to say that it was completely passively cooled is a bit of a lie, as without any airflow over the motherboards, they were overheating pretty quickly this produced insane stuttering while gaming making anything pretty much unplayable.

We did eventually overcome this by mounting a small 40mm fan for additional cooling. The reason I'm making this video is because I'm just not confident that the average or even intermediate builder would know what was causing the issue that we were seeing there, especially while the onboard sensors don't show the full story and this sort of issue isn't going to be apparent in smaller form-factor cases like Street Cones before and passive cases. There are many small form-factor cases even once that I write quite highly that don't have fans next to critical components like the motherboard or MDOT to drive, so today's video is a quick little mod using these tiny little and powerful knock door fans that will fix this very issue.

These tiny fans are the nacht 40mm by 4 by 10 and a 4 by 20 models, which are the 12-volt PWM models. They'll plug directly into your motherboard's 4-pin fan headers and also sell 5-volt models, just make sure you don't mistakenly buy those instead. Although these tiny fans spin up to 5000 rpm, they do stay pretty quiet while doing so. To test the thermal improvement and viability of doing something like this, I think my own system would be fairly appropriate for a mod like this. It is custom mode called although the VRM is not located near any direct airflow at all but I definitely haven't encountered any VRM throttling during my time using it.

The primary MDOT to drive on the other hand is mounted directly underneath one of the radiator fans so I do expect airflow there to be at the moment fairly adequate. How you mount the fans is up to you, as there is sufficient room to mount up to two or three of these fans if you like. You could potentially improve thermals even further if you want to make some sort of overkill active cooling mod.

Using a small 40mm fan was quite surprising, as we were running a Samsung 960 Evo and VME drive in Crystal disc mark for what is roughly a 5-minute read and write stress test and without any active cooling we're seeing the drive top out at 88.4 degrees. See not a bad result but getting close to throttling territory if we were to push those rights any further with active cooling, we were able to reduce peak thermals by a massive 50 degree C.

In terms of noise levels, I'd recommend using these fans at 3500 rpm and below, as you're not really going to get much thermal benefit beyond that and the additional noise levels are just not worth it. To control the fan curve of these tiny fans if you're mounting to the VRM, I just recommend controlling them based off of CPU temperature. You can of course just do that within the motherboards' BIOS for MDOT to drive cooling though, it's a bit trickier but I would recommend using a program called SpeedFan where you can create your own fan curve based off of whichever thermal sensor is in your system in this case then it'd be the thermal sensor from your MDOT to SSD.

Overall, building a passively cooled and silent gaming PC may seem like an impossible task, but with the right components and some clever engineering, it's definitely achievable. I hope that my experience has been helpful to you all out there who are looking to build their own gaming PCs without breaking the bank or sacrificing performance.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin a recent video I built a completely passively called and a silent gaming PC in Street comms at db4 and while we did end up opting for a lower power solution that I had hoped for in the beginning it was definitely the quietest system that I had ever built but to say it was completely passively called that's a bit of a lie in fact without any air flow over the motherboards of erm they were overheating pretty quickly this produced insane stuttering while gaming making anything pretty much unplayable but we did eventually overcome this by mounting a small 40mm fan for additional cooling the reason that I'm making this video is because I'm just not confident that the average or even intermediate builder would know what was causing the issue that we were seeing there especially while the onboard sensors don't show the full story and this sort of issue isn't going to be apparent just for the street Conde before and passive cases like that there are many small form-factor cases even once that I write quite highly that don't have fans next to critical components like the motherboard of erm or MDOT to drive so today's video is a quick little mod using these tiny little and powerful knock door fans that will fix this very issue and you could definitely experience this issue in larger builds too but it's definitely something that you're more likely to come across in smaller more airflow constrained builds especially in cases under 10 leaders this includes cases like the ghost s1 the den a for SFX and the volca 3 & 5 now for lower power builds this might not be too much of a concern but if you are serious about cramming as much power as possible into a small volume case this is definitely a module one to keep in your back pocket again this could work for larger overclocked builds to where you do want to implement your own active erm calling after all active cooling is usually considered a premium feature that's usually reserved for high-end motherboards so let's see if we can do this ourselves so it starts with these powerful little quiet fans here that some of you have probably seen me use in a few projects here and there these are nacht who was 40 mill fans the nfa 4 by 10 and a 4 by 20 these are the 12-volt PWM models so they'll plug directly into your motherboard 4 pin fan headers they do also sell 5 volt models just make sure you don't mistakenly buy those instead although these tiny fans spin up to 5000 rpm they do stay pretty quiet while doing so we'll take a look at noise levels when the fans are actually mounted though seeing as most of the noise is from the turbulent air alright so to test the thermal improvement and viability of doing something like this I think my own system would be fairly appropriate for a mod like this it is custom mode called although the vrm is not located near any direct airflow at all but I definitely haven't encountered any vrm throttling during my time using it the primary m-dot to drive on the other hand is mounted directly underneath one of the radiator fans so I do expect airflow there to be at the moment fairly adequate now how you mount the fans is up to you you can make some sort of bracket if you really want to go all in but double-sided mounting tape works good enough and you can't see it when the fans mounted so this is what I'd recommend anywhere with a solid surface this will work and the area that the tape occupies is a dead zone for airflow anyway I do recommend removing the sticker behind the fan hub though you'll get better adhesion the tape directly to the frame also this mod is going to work best for heat sinks that have an actual thin array on them or at least some cutouts like we see here that way we are maximizing the surface area that's being covered by the airflow for em to drive cooling mounting is going to be a lot trickier especially if you're working with a compact sandwich layout case like this I ended up mounting mine on the i/o shroud pushing air just generally downwards towards the primary m2 nvme Drive and as we'll see the results here are actually pretty surprising so let's take a look at some of the thermal tests now running the ninety nine hundred KS in blender for twenty minutes the vrm peaks at 72 degrees C with no active cooling installed that's not bad certainly within a safe range but we are working with a fairly decent board and a top mounted radiator that is bringing in some air at least into the case when we install our 20 millimeter thick 40 mil knocked to a fan we do get a decent amount of cooling though in the end we're able to reduce peak vrm thermals by about 12 degrees C if you do have issues with vrm thermals in your small form-factor system which we don't here that thermal delta is enough to bring you back within a safe range what's further is that reducing the fan speed from 5,000 rpm to 3500 rpm the thermal results aren't that different at all but the noise difference is significant as we'll see 5,000 rpm is mildly audible whereas 3500 rpm is inaudible amongst the pump and radiator fans next up I tested the slim 40mm fan at 5,000 rpm and seeing as this fan does move less air we do get a slightly warmer result still though an 8 degree improvement from stock isn't too bad at all I will also note that you're not limited to just one fan here there is sufficient room to mount up to two or three of these fans if you like so you could potentially improve thermals even further if you want to make some sort of overkill active cooling mod now moving on to the M to drive this was quite surprising he were running a samsung 960 Evo and vme drive in Crystal disc mark for what is roughly a 5 minute read and write stress test and without any active cooling we're seeing the drive top out at 8 84 degrees see not a bad result but getting close to throttling territory if we were to push those rights any further with active cooling were able to reduce peak thermals by a massive 50 degree C if you find your primary MDOT to drive getting quite hot under load this could definitely be a very effective cooling setup now in terms of noise levels I'd recommend using these fans at 3500 rpm and below you're not really going to get much thermal benefit beyond that and the additional noise levels are just not worth it now to control the fan curve of these tiny fans if you're mounting to the VRM I just recommend controlling them based off of CPU temperature you can of course just do that within the motherboards bios for MDOT to drive cooling though it's a bit trickier but I would recommend using a program called speed fan where you can create your own fan curve based off of whichever thermal sensor is in your system in this case then it'd be the thermal sensor from your MDOT to SSD so if you are building an incredibly powerful small form-factor system this might be a mod that you want to give a go especially because without it you may be running into performance issues or even thermal throttling if so I will leave a link to these ones down below in the description as always guys a huge thanks for watching and I will see you all in the next one\n"