I finally got my sleeper build under 40 decibels and it took 11 fans to do it
So I built a sleeper in a beat up 1998 Gateway tower I got off Craigslist for 20 bucks. Inside it is a 7800X3D and a 4070 Ti Super, and I was super proud until my roommate said it sounded like a hair dryer in the living room. I ran a free decibel app on my phone from 3 feet away and it hit 52 dB under load, which was way worse than I thought. I tried swapping the stock cooler for a big tower cooler, then spent 60 bucks on fancy fans, then realized the real problem was positive pressure pushing air through every gap in that 26 year old plastic front panel. I ended up cramming 11 fans total in there, four intake up front, three exhaust, two on the CPU cooler, two on the GPU, and I even wedged one under the drive cage with zip ties. After all that I hit 39 dB at idle and 42 under a full Cinebench run, and honestly the case looks even more like junk now because of all the hot glue and cut plastic. My question is whether anyone here has gotten a sleeper quieter than that without drilling a single new hole, because I caved and cut two 120mm spots in the side panel and I feel like a cheater.