Dragonlich

I agree with laconic1; getting rid of computer noise is my main goal. FYI, here's my setup:

- Antec P182 case. Main selling point: the power supply is at the bottom of the case, seperated from the rest of the components. It has a lot of other features, of course. The regular 120 mm casefans have been replaced with even more quiet Nexus fans.
- Gigabyte P35-DS4 motherboard. Passive cooling with heatpipes = no noisy 40mm fan.
- Intel P8400 dual-core. I specifically didn't go for quad-core because this CPU generates less heat. Besides, in most real-world applications the extra cores won't matter.
- 4 gb of memory, with extra heat spreaders. Not that important, but the extra cooling is a nice bonus.
- Scythe Ninja CPU cooler. Waaaaaay overkill for the processor. But that only means the 120 mm Nexus casefan can run at around 500-600 rpm (= no noise). (The CPU is 35 degrees C). I've mounted it using a bolt-through kit from another CPU cooler. The normal mounting method (regular Intel) looks waaay to weak for the heavy cooler.
- MSI videocard, geforce 8800GT, with huge cooler (Zalman). This is the one thing I would change. The cooler is pretty damn quiet, but it's the only component I can hear...
- Corsair 520 watt PSU, with big 120 mm fan. I specifically picked this one over the 650 watt PSU because it's even more quiet. And I really don't need more power.
- 2 x 750 Gb Samsung harddisks. Picked because they're quiet. They're mounted in the lower drivebay, using the (standard P182) rubber spacers. The spacers stop any vibration from spreading to rest of the case; less vibration = less noise.

On a normal day, my computer is almost impossible to hear, even from up close. And it's powerful enough to easily run every game I throw at it.

I post this to show what can be achieved with a normal budget, without going to extremes. I picked each and every component for it's low noise and (relatively) good performance. I would never buy a noisy computer again.

(edited: videocard was wrong. sorry will.)