Quiet PC Ultimate 4K Entertainment PC

The Serenity Ultimate 4K Entertainment PC has been designed as a high performance media and gaming PC all rolled into one. And with it being housed inside the gorgeous Streacom F12C chassis it will not look out of place in any living room.

Beauty and power in your living room

We are pleased to announce yet another ground-breaking example of living room PC design, the Serenity Ultimate 4K Entertainment system - why sacrifice beauty for performance when you can have both. This beast of a machine has the ability of connecting to an ultra-high definition 4K TV giving you the best possible visuals whether you are watching a 4K movie or playing a computer game.

Top Performance and Reliability

Because we use a fully-featured motherboard, the PC is a very capable unit. It can be built with up to 64 Gigabytes of memory and one of Intel’s latest 7th Generation Core processors. Famous for their excellent performance/value balance, these processors have the latest architecture and offer excellent performance. We recommend a minimum memory specification of 8GB for this operating system to perform at its best.

Asus Z270-A Motherboard

We supply the Asus Z270-A motherboard with this system which offers a wealth of features suitable for all applications. The motherboards support the Intel’s 7th Generation processors, bringing together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer the absolute ultimate platform for your silent PC. You’ll find two USB3.1 ports (one is Type-C) on the rear of the motherboard, which is twice the speed as USB 3.0 for amazing fast file transfers. The motherboard also features two M.2 slots. A typical Solid State Drive (SSD) has a read/write speed of around 550 MB/s, with a M.2 drive you can expect speeds of up to 3200 MB/s! We therefore highly recommend opting for a M.2 drive for your operating system due the incredible speed it offers compared to a standard SSD.

Configuration options

Configuring any system can be a daunting task and this system is no exception. Before you take the plunge and start ticking boxes, ask yourself what do you exactly want the PC to do?

Flicker-free 4K - As previously mentioned this system is designed to connect to an ultra-high resolution TV/monitor. Even though the integrated graphics are capable of producing a resolution of 4096 x 2160 it can only do that at 24Hz from the HDMI port, which can produce a latency due to the low frequency. Therefore if you are looking for the smoothest possible playback then we recommend opting for one of the optional graphics cards, all of them feature HDMI 2.0 which is able to achieve a resolution of 4096 x 2160 @ 60Hz, giving smooth flicker-free visuals.

Gaming requirements - When considering which graphics card to opt from a gaming point of view you’ll need to ask yourself two questions, firstly which games will be played? Virtually every game has different system requirements which can make choosing the most suitable card tricky. Our experiences tells us it is always better to go for a graphics card that is better than the recommended system requirements, this not only future-proofs you but also gives better performance.

Another thing to consider which is extremely important is what resolution do you plan to play the game at? Running a high demanding 3D game at 1080p is very easy for the graphics cards listed in the configurator below, we would expect any of them to maintain around 60FPS without breaking a sweat. This issue lies when the resolution is increased beyond 1080p. For example we would not expect a GTX1050 to be able to play a 3D game at 4K resolution at around 60FPS, you would need to consider a more powerful graphics card, like the GTX1070 or even the GTX1080, which will help maintaining 60FPS at higher resolutions.

Cooling options - As this is an air cooled system it will not be silent, but be rest assured we only use the quietest components available so the noise the PC will make will be extremely low. We have chosen extremely quiet CPU coolers and even the graphics cards are designed to only use the fans when the GPU exceeds 60°C. Of course during high intensive CPU and GPU tasks the fans are designed to run faster to provide additional cooling. But during quieter times, like watching a movie, the system will be virtually silent!

The Streacom F12C is not shipped with any cooling fans so we have made available the option of adding up to two cooling fans. Of course this may not be necessary in most cases but could be useful if you would like to reduce the internal temperature of the installed components and generally improve the cooling. This is especially important if the chassis is in an enclosure or in a warmer than normal environment.

Blu-ray playback

If you like to watch Blu-ray films please note that Windows does not have the built-in ability to play Blu-ray movie discs and if you would like to be able to do this, we recommend that you purchase third party software to enable the facility. Software such as CyberLink PowerDVD will allow seamless playback and control of Blu-ray movies.

Windows Media Center

Unfortunately Windows 10 does not include Windows Media Center, therefore we recommend you consider an alternative. The most popular are MediaPortal and Kodi (formally known as XBMC). Both programs offer the facility to do exactly (and much more) what Windows Media Center does, although some configuration is required via plugins (add-ons) supplied by both MediaPortal and Kodi. Both pieces of software are open source which means they are free for personal use and they can be used with any Windows operating system. We highly recommend you take a look at them to see if they are more suited to your needs. Please note that we do not provide support for MediaPortal or Kodi.

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.

So if you need a lot of storage space (for videos or large quantities of digital photos for example), then we would recommend an HDD. On the other hand, if you prefer silence and speed (especially boot-up speed), then an SSD or M2 drive would be a better choice. Of course, you can have more than one drive, so you could have the best of both worlds by choosing one of each! We recommend that customers choose an SSD or M2 drive as a boot drive that contains the operating system and important programs. A conventional HDD would store other data but remember that if you intend to have a totally silent PC, you might want to forgo the HDDs altogether as they will make some noise due to their moving parts.

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 you 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, then after we have checked and repaired it, we will send it back to you by express courier at our expense. 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.