Advice on quiet cooling fans for home build

[TheFu]

Corsair PSUs had a good reputation a few years ago based on statistics from a large, independent, PC maker, building tens of thousands of systems in a year. I use Seasonic 80%+ Bronze which were known at the purchase time to be quiet and cool. I haven't been in the PSU market in a few years, so all my info is out of date.

Heat that isn't generated doesn't need to be cooled. If being quiet is paramount, look at silver and gold rated PSUs.

For systems with just a CPU, onboard iGPU and 1-2 HDDs, I don't add any more cooling than the PSU fan. My NFS server is like that, but with a 5 disk hot-swap bay which has a largish fan pulling air into the case across the drives. No other fans. It also has an external array, so cooling those disk is outside.

My main VM server has an SSD and 1 HDD inside, plus a fan-less nvidia GPU. It has a Seasonic PSU and 1 case fan, only because that case came with one. The Ryzen 5 CPU uses the free CPU cooler that came with the CPU and it slightly overclocked using the motherboard automatic OC feature.

None of these systems has ever shown any heat warnings in system logs.

I had a "Shuttle" Core i7 from 2009 that had cooling issues according to the system logs. It had a CAD nVidia GPU. Throttled 1 or 2 cores from time to time when doing transcoding.

There it no such thing as being over-cooled.

These days, pretty much all components have built-in thermal reporting. Setup monitoring and alarming for each part. I do the same for low battery conditions on my laptops.

[Dennis N]

Corsair CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply

I used this same one in my last computer build last year and I'm satisfied with it - semi-modular or modular is worth it - with the new m.2 drives you can forget about sata cables. The fan is very quiet - essentially inaudible. That computer uses Intel integrated graphics only. The box says: Corsair CX 450M - probably the same as what you are planning.

[him610]

I too have Corsair CX450M installed in one of my homebuilt systems. It is in a Cooler Master Elite 110 case. The semi-modular design is just what one needs in one of the smaller mini-ITX cases. There have been no issues with fan noise or cooling.
What you might consider about your legacy case is the possible lack of USB-3 or USB-C ports that a more up-to-date case may provide.

[TheFu]

I had one of these http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-80 running a ~25W APU as a media center player in an ITX case, before I switched to Raspberry Pis. I wouldn't hesitate to get another picoPSU for a similar, silent, requirement in a tiny case, with x86/amd64 CPU.

Lots of options available from which to pick.

[benawhile]

What you might consider about your legacy case is the possible lack of USB-3 or USB-C ports that a more up-to-date case may provide.

Thanks. Good point well made. I will get a new case. Choice between Coolermaster N300 and NR400. There is an option for optical drive. Prob will get NR400.

[TheFu]

Or get a USB3.2 or c hub that sits on top of the existing case with 4-8 ports for $15. Just depends on your budget and how "clean" you want. Or you can get one of those 3.5inch front-panel things with 57 card reader support and 4 USB 3, 3.1, 3.2 ports for $20.
I use both of these methods with cases from 1999 and 2002, respectively. Nothing wrong with the cases and they have good drive access already, so why spend $80 for a nicer replacement? At least that's my thoughts.

Reuse whenever you can. Save the landfill.

Of course, I swap out MB+CPU+RAM and call that a "new computer" and don't try to sell older systems to other people. A good argument could easily be made if you build and use a system for 1-2 yrs, then want to sell everything to someone ready to go, just add keyboard, mouse, and monitor.