Quiet PC The Beast Fanless, Intel Edition

MonsterLabo’s ‘The Beast’ is a high performance fanless chassis able to dissipate up to 400W of heat, thanks to two massive integrated heatsinks. This is the place to configure a complete Intel based system around this impressive chassis.

No doubt you’ve already had a look at the product page for ‘The Beast’. If not then we highly recommend you take a look because the below information is about configuring a complete system around this chassis, rather than highlighting the many benefits of ‘The Beast’.

The fact that you are look at the page tells us that you are in need for a high performance PC that is totally silent. ‘The Beast’ is just the case to allow this to happen, as it can accommodate a CPU up to 150W TDP and a graphics up to 250W TDP without the need for any fans whatsoever. And here at Quiet PC we are very interested in completely silent systems, especially those that can achieve high levels of performance.

Processor Recommendation

At the heart of the ‘The Beast’ are two massive heatsinks, one for the CPU, while the other is for a graphics card. To maintain the limits of the CPU heatsink the below configurator shows a list of compatible Intel processors. Their are two versions of each processor, one has a ‘K’ suffix while the other processor has no suffix. The main difference between these two are the amount of heat they output. The K-suffix will generally output more heat because the base TDP is 125W, while the other processors are 65W.

Take the Core i9 as an example. The 11900K has a TDP of 125W while running at 3.5GHz, while the 11900 is only 65W and but runs at 2.5GHz. This is a big difference in heat output, but performance is not as different as you would imagine. The typical Passmark score of the 11900K is 25,677 and the 11900 is 23,499. Our recommendation is to opt for the non-suffix processor, unless you are looking for the best performance possible.

Graphics Card Recommendation

The second heatsink at the heart of ‘The Best’ is dedicated to the graphics card. This heatsink can dissipate a massive 250W without the need of any airflow. The list of cards in the configurator are all cards we currently have available that can be used with zero fans. In regards to what we would recommend, that all depends on what you require the graphics card for. If you need 4K outputs to drive multiple monitors then the main features would be the amount of ports the card has along with the DisplayPort and/or HDMI version. Alternatively if you are a gamer or intend to play the occasional game to wind down then you may want to opt for a more powerful card.

The range of graphics cards shown will consistently change depending on availability as well as compatibility.

As we are building this PC as a completely fanless system, we are unfortunately unable to provide this system with a graphics card above the Nvidia RTX 3070 or the AMD RX 6800. This is because the RTX 3070 Ti has a TDP of 290W and the AMD RX 6800 XT is 300W. Any other graphics card beyond those already mentioned will consume even more power. Yes, of course we could add a fan to aid cooling, but this is a fanless system and adding any moving part will no longer make it silent.

Storage considerations

When specifying your new PC’s storage options using our system configurator below, you will be offered a choice of drives which vary by price and capacity. There are two primary types of storage. A conventional hard disk drive (HDD) offers huge storage capacity for a low price, but it won’t be especially fast and it will generate a certain amount of running noise since it contains a constantly-rotating spindle. A solid state (SSD) or a M2 drive on the other hand, offer tremendous speed and absolutely silent operation, but they cost more than an HDD for any given capacity. As this system is based around making absolutely zero noise, then you will not find any conventional disk on the configurator. Although there is a large range of SSD in varying capacities. With this particular system you can install up four M.2 drives and four SSDs. Giving you up to a mouth-watering 40TB total storage with an equally mouth-watering price tag.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to how the motherboard is installed in the case, adding additional M.2 drives to the system is not an easy task. The motherboard would have to be completely removed from the heatsink. Therefore, we highly recommend you populate as many of the M.2 ports as possible at the time of configuring the PC. Adding a SSD is significantly easier. Adding one of these does not require any component to be removed from the system.

Clean Build™ Promise

The price of many pre-built PCs these days is often supported by cash kickbacks from software companies who pay hardware manufacturers to pre-install limited or trial versions of their software and then hope that the customer pays to upgrade to the full version. The downside to this approach is that the new PC comes pre-loaded with a lot of “junkware” which bloats the operating system and can cause severe performance degradation.

Here at Quiet PC we believe that customers have every right to expect the best possible performance from a brand new PC, so every system we build comes with our Clean Build™ promise. We install the operating system (if you order one), motherboard drivers, OS updates and Microsoft Security Essentials / Windows Defender - that’s it. You won’t be pestered by pop-ups and nag screens and you can get on with using your new PC immediately without having to uninstall lots of junkware first. Your new machine will boot in super-quick time and will stay running quickly for many months and years to come.

Free hardware support and fully inclusive warranty

We offer free hardware technical support for as long as you own the machine. This support covers any hardware query or problem, including advice on maintenance and upgrades. We regret we can’t offer software support or training so we would recommend contacting the software vendor in this instance.

Our hardware warranty runs for two years and is “collect and return” meaning that UK customers don’t need to worry about getting the machine back to us - we will instruct our courier to collect it from you on a day of your choosing, we will also return it back to you once it has been repaired. International customers will need to return the PC back to us at their cost, but we will return the PC back at our cost once it has been repaired. In addition, unlike many other PC suppliers, we have an “open-case” policy which means you are free to open the machine and perform your own minor modifications or upgrades without worrying that your warranty might be affected.

*Jargon buster

TDP = Thermal Design Power, the amount of power (measured in watts) consumed by a component. Please note, that the stated TDP of a processor is the base clock speed. If the clock speed exceed the base clock (due to Intel’s Turbo Boost or AMD’s Turbo Core) then the TDP will increase accordingly.

DisplayPort and HDMI - These are the main type of ports supplied on the back of a graphics card. Current versions are DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, both of these version are perfect for 4K high resolution monitors.

M.2 and SSDs - Although these drives are both solid state, there are two main difference between them. A M.2 drive connects directly onto the motherboard and therefore does not need data or power cables, which makes for a much tidier build. A SSD, does require these cables and is generally installed onto the chassis in some type of drive bay. Another benefit of a M.2 drive over a SSD is the read and write speeds. SSDs use SATA interface to connect to the motherboard, which is currently limited to a speed of 600 MB/s (Megabytes per second). A M.2 drive uses the PCI express interface through a NVMe driver and has a theoretical limit of 64 Gb/s (Gigabits per second), which is the same as 8000 MB/s. The configurator will show the read and write speed for all of the M.2 drives available for this system.