Building a PC for the first time for many years was an education on just how easy it is to build a basically silent, powerful machine.

I picked a nice big case, a quiet PSU, two large fans. I put a 3.5Ghz i7, at GTX 770 and a couple of drives in it.

I also bought lots more large fans and a speed controller, but I didn't need any of that. Even with the stock Intel cooler and a GPU that is just using a basic cooling design, it is effectively silent under all but the highest loads.

I expected to have to do lots of work to get it quiet, in the end I didn't need to do anything special (beyond a nice big case*, deliberately large fans and a known quiet PSU).

* ok, the case was complete overkill, a massive Corsair thing, but in my defense I bought that intending to build a huge server into it that never happened