Ask Slashdot: Making a 'Wife Friendly' Gaming PC?

shadeshope writes Having just gotten married, I find that for some inexplicable reason my wife doesn't like my huge, noisy, 'ugly' gaming PC being in the living room. I have tried hiding it in a TV cabinet: still too noisy. I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games. Have any other slashdotters encountered this problem? I don't want to buy a console (Steam sales let me game so cheaply), or mess with water cooling. Ideally I would just hide it in the attic, is there some wireless technology that would be fast enough for gaming use? I have become quite attached to 'behemoth.' I have been upgrading him for years and he is the centre of my digital life. I run plex home theatre, media centre, steam, iTunes and air server. Will I have to do my gaming in the spare room? Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.

Comments

Simple

[darkain]

Get a less noisy system. How hard is that to figure out?

Get a case that has one or two 120mm or larger fans for airflow. They generate much MUCH less noise than 80mm fans and still push enough air to keep the thing chilled.

Switch CPU/GPU fans to ones that only turn on when needed, and are off while the system is at a cool idle temp.

Switch your HDD out for an SSD, and use network storage for your bulk storage. Gigabit Ethernet is ~100MB/sec and so is a rotational disk, so you're not gonna see much different in performance here (assuming your network doesn't suck)

Re:Simple

[pushing-robot]

Came to say this. If you want a great build, include these:

An Asus Strix GTX 970
A Seasonic Platinum 1050w
A 120mm/140mm CPU cooler, at least a Hyper 212 Evo
A 4xxx Intel chip
A SSD
A case with lots of ventilation so you won't need extra fans. For maximum Wife Acceptance Factor, consider mini-ITX.

Noise? What noise? If your motherboard is willing to shut off your CPU fan at idle, you'll be at 0db (except for electrical noise). Even during heavy gaming the thing will barely make a whisper.

Need more help? SPCR has you covered.

Propagation delay ???

[fluffy99]

I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games

Eh? This sounds more like crappy cables, than anything else. Propagation delay on an extra 10-feet of cables is hardly measurable much less noticeable.

Re:This is a top cause of divorce

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you married or have you ever been in a long term relationship?
You don't need to spend every single moment with your significant other in order to have a healthy relationship. In fact, it is usually a good idea to have some individual hobbies. Maybe his wife wants him out of the TV room, so she can watch America's Next Top Model in peace.

Re:No Way Out

[gnupun]

Tell her "That's The Way It Is", or get a new machine.

I don't like noisy PCs either and there a couple of solutions:

a) Use a low-RPM, huge, CPU fan like Zalman along with a fanless power supply and video card. There should be very little noise from such a PC.

b) Go all the way and buy a water-cooled PC. No fans, no noise.

c) Buy an Apple laptop/desktop. These are noiseless except under heavy load.

Re:Stop gaming.

[maliqua]

Source: Divorced due to Eve-online.

To be fair that's not 'gaming' eve is essentially a second career but without any of the real life rewards for your efforts.