For every hardware enthusiast hell-bent on pushing their silicon to the max, there's another obsessed with tweaking their machine to inaudible levels. Okay, perhaps that's not entirely true. But plenty of us can appreciate a rig that doesn't generate noise pollution, and that's precisely what lesser-known system builder Puget Systems is hoping to cash in on.
The boutique PC maker has announced its most silent offering to date, the Serenity SPCR Edition, which runs at 14 dBA@1m when idle and 18 dBA@1m during full CPU and GPU load. That's around, if not less noise than the average case fan toward the quieter end of the spectrum. By comparison, the redesigned Xbox 360 runs between 45 dBA and 51 dBA.
You can order the Serenity SPCR with an array of modern hardware, including Intel Core processors, 2GB to 16GB of RAM, a GeForce GT 210, GT 240 as well as a single or dual Radeon HD 5750, several popular sound cards, a handful of HDD and SSD options, and one or two optical drives with both a Blu-ray player and burner available. Pricing starts at $1,250.
If you're curious, the machine said to operate at 14-18 dBA had a Core i7-860, 2GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 5750, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD with a secondary 1.5TB WD Caviar Green HDD, a DVD drive, an Antec CP-850 PSU and Antec P183 chassis along with various noise-reducing accessories. This particular configuration is priced around the $2,500 mark.