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Serenity Mini Gamer
Discontinued
Discontinued
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Quiet PC Serenity Mini Gamer

An excellent quality fully-built quiet gaming PC, using best value high performance components installed in the tiny Deep Silence 4 case. This high-specification machine uses Intel’s latest Z97 chipset and comes with a two-year fully inclusive warranty.

The Serenity Mini Gamer is based around Nanoxia’s excellent Deep Silence 4 case. This case is ideal for customers looking to build a high end gaming system in a small package. Acoustically lined and with a built-in fan controller, the DS4 proves that large cases for gaming are not always necessary!

Features

  1. Fully built quiet PC system, configurable according to your budget
  2. Selected quiet components offer great value and minimal running noise
  3. We build to your specification and deliver within 7 days
  4. Clean Build™ Promise and original OS+drivers supplied on DVDs
  5. Two year warranty with open-case policy

The best quiet / performance balance

Any air-cooled PC will always be a compromise between quietness (arising from careful cooling design) and performance (which produces heat). This situation affects gamers even more than most because of course, the latest and greatest processors and 3D graphics cards tend to be the ones which run the hottest and which have the loudest fans on them.

We’ve done a lot of development work in this area to bring you the Serenity Mini Gamer - a fully built high performance PC which we think offers the best of both worlds - virtually silent running (especially when the PC isn’t being used for gaming), and extraordinary gaming performance with great cooling design which gives total safety and reliability for your precious CPU and GPU.

Top Performance and Reliability

The PC itself doesn’t compromise on performance, and can be built pre-installed with up to 32 gigabytes of memory and an Intel Haswell (4th generation) CPU. Famous for their excellent performance/value balance, the Core i5 and i7 processors have a quad-core architecture and under heavy loading, will automatically “Turbo Boost” their clock speed by up to 12%. Regarding memory, we recommend a minimum of 4GB to ensure that the machine has plenty to spare and will always offer excellent responsiveness even when running multiple applications simultaneously.

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 your choice of Internet security - that’s it. You won’t be pestered by pop-ups or 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.

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 drive (SSD) on the other hand, offers tremendous speed and absolutely silent operation, but it will 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 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! And finally, we do offer the option of enclosing HDD(s) in an acoustic enclosure called a Smart Drive - this will significantly reduce the running noise of a hard disk.

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.

Review

  • PC Advisor

    If you don’t mind sacrificing a little performance in order to get a near-silent gaming PC, the Quiet PC Serenity Mini Gamer is for you.

SpecificationsSerenity Mini Gamer
Machine nameNofan A460 Silent Desktop
Compatible Operating SystemsWindows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Ubuntu Linux
MotherboardGigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5
GraphicsIntel HD4600 or optional discrete graphics card
Graphics portsDVI, HDMI and VGA (up to any 3 ports simultaneously)
Max resolution DVI & VGA1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Max resolution HDMI4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz / 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz (HDMI 1.4a)
Maximum shared graphics memory1 GB
SATA 6Gb/s ports6 *
SATA RAID SupportRAID 0, 1, 5 and 10
LANQualcomm Atheros 10/100/1000 Mbit Ethernet
Wireless LANOptional
BluetoothOptional
USB 3.0 ports5 (4 on rear panel / 2 on front)
USB 2.0 ports5 (4 on rear panel / 1 on front)
AudioHD 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel + 1 x optical S/PDIF In/Out
Other rear panel portsPS/2 keyboard & mouse ports
x16 PCI Express slots2, running at x8 and x4
x1 PCI Express slots1
Memory slots4 (max 32 GB)
PC dimensions (L x W x H)480 x 200 x 380 mm
Maximum length of expansion cards265 mm (395 with HDD cages removed)
Clean Build™ promiseOS+updates, drivers and MS Security Essentials only
Recovery methodWindows installation and drivers DVDs supplied
Warranty typeCollect and return, open-case policy
Warranty24 months
  • *4 when M.2 or SATA Express ports are used
SpecificationsSerenity Mini Gamer
Machine nameNofan A460 Silent Desktop
Compatible Operating SystemsWindows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Ubuntu Linux
MotherboardGigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5
GraphicsIntel HD4600 or optional discrete graphics card
Graphics portsDVI, HDMI and VGA (up to any 3 ports simultaneously)
Max resolution DVI & VGA1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Max resolution HDMI4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz / 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz (HDMI 1.4a)
Maximum shared graphics memory1 GB
SATA 6Gb/s ports6 *
SATA RAID SupportRAID 0, 1, 5 and 10
LANQualcomm Atheros 10/100/1000 Mbit Ethernet
Wireless LANOptional
BluetoothOptional
USB 3.0 ports5 (4 on rear panel / 2 on front)
USB 2.0 ports5 (4 on rear panel / 1 on front)
AudioHD 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel + 1 x optical S/PDIF In/Out
Other rear panel portsPS/2 keyboard & mouse ports
x16 PCI Express slots2, running at x8 and x4
x1 PCI Express slots1
Memory slots4 (max 32 GB)
PC dimensions (L x W x H)480 x 200 x 380 mm
Maximum length of expansion cards265 mm (395 with HDD cages removed)
Clean Build™ promiseOS+updates, drivers and MS Security Essentials only
Recovery methodWindows installation and drivers DVDs supplied
Warranty typeCollect and return, open-case policy
Warranty24 months
  • *4 when M.2 or SATA Express ports are used

Customer Reviews

Nice machine badly let down by PSU

,

Configured with: GTX 770 JetStream, DS4 Case, Scythe Mugen CPU cooler, Raider 650 W PSU, 120 GB SSD and 1 TB secondary HDD. Otherwise defaults.

Delivery: Quick. Ordered on a Monday night, delivered on the Thursday. Well within the advertised 7 days. All the manuals and bits and pieces are packaged in the motherboard box. The PC itself is packaged in the box for the case. An enlarged photocopy of the tiny Windows product code label is also included: nice touch.

Build quality: Good. The little rubber feet fell off almost immediately but otherwise seems well put together. All cabling neat and tidy.

Performance: Fast! At 2560 x 1440 with full quality settings it has no problem running any of the games I’ve tried on it: Elite: Dangerous, Far Cry 3 and Skyrim.

Noise: Very quiet, except for one component: the PSU. Its fan completely dominates everything else in the machine. The Raider is advertised with a maximum noise of less than 21 dB; I don’t believe it. It is at least 25 dB cold and rises to about 40 dB under load. In a standard PC this would be perfectly acceptable, on the quiet-side even; but this system promises serenity and this PSU wrecks any hope of that. (I have since replaced the Raider PSU with a Seasonic X-650 and now I do have the almost silent gaming PC I thought I was buying.)

Overall: Disappointing 3/5. With a decent quiet PSU like the Seasonic it would score full marks. But I can’t recommend this system as purchased.

Quiet PC replied on 14th August 2014

Hi - thanks for your feedback and please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused by the noisy power supply. Recently we have found that individual samples of the Raider seems to have different noise levels and as a result we will not be using this power supply in our PC systems from now on. It seems like unfortunately your power supply slipped through our quality assurance process before PC despatch. If you would like us to refund you for the power supply and/or send you replacement feet for the chassis, please get in touch and we would be happy to help.

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