THE SILENT MASTER?
IT CERTAINLY FEELS a bit strange to hit the power button on a freshly assembled build and hear absolutely nothing. It’s actually not that strange, but the usual cause is that the system is failing to boot because we have a loose connection or a faulty part. Mercifully, our fanless PC booted on the first attempt, and we enjoyed the manifold pleasures of installing Windows without any fan noise to irritate us.
Before we jump into the numbers with our benchmark testing results, we feel compelled to say that this system exceeded our expectations in numerous ways. Yes, it did get pretty warm, but we were prepared for that; in a well-ventilated room, the Core i5-11600K idled around 40°C, which is considerably above average, but completely within acceptable parameters. Running the CPU at that sort of temperature for extended periods isn’t likely to cause any harm to the processor.
The Seasonic Prime Titanium PSU performed even better, with thermals sitting only marginally above average. This system doesn’t need anywhere close to the 600W ceiling, to be fair, so it’s perhaps not surprising, but we were still pleased with its performance. We noticed an almost imperceptible whine from the PSU when the system was in sleep mode, but we suspect this was caused by the extension power cable built into the Masterbox Q500L.
Our SSD ran impressively cool, staying below 45°C even during large transfer tests; a testament both to Samsung’s build quality, and the effectiveness of the M.2 heat shield included with the TUF motherboard. Overall, there was plenty to love about this build. Barring the big, heavy cooler, it was a quick and simple machine to put together, with little cable management needed after we were done. We’d call it a resounding success, but let’s see those testing figures first.
BENCHMARKING RESULTS
The results were a mixed bag. The Core i5-11600K performed admirably, with little performance loss, despite the fanless cooling solution. CPU temperatures in games and benchmarks ran high, generally sitting around 80°C, but never verged into genuinely concerning territory.
The Samsung 980 Pro dominated here, pushing the limits of PCIe 4.0 to deliver blisteringly fast transfer speeds. It sat much closer to its theoretical ceiling with sequential write tests, falling short of the 5GB/s maximum by less than 100MB, while sequential reads were just a little slower, falling nearly 250MB/s short of the 7GB/s top speed. Still, these are both staggeringly fast transfer speeds that are certainly not to be sniffed at.
Graphical tests were less impressive, unsurprisingly. The UHD Xe 750 integrated graphics are decent, certainly a major step up from UHD 630, but, as you can see from our results, they fell short of offering a practical 1080p gaming experience in all but the least demanding titles. Dropping the graphical settings to minimum in Rise ofthe Tomb Raider still only produced framerates of around 25fps on average.
But 720p is an option; dropping the graphical settings along with the reduced resolution made our benchmarking games playable at 30fps, with resource-light esports titles likely to run higher. Fortnite and Valorant were playable in 1080p, with the latter maintaining 30fps at medium settings without putting too much thermal stress on the processor and memory.
However, the thermal performance of the overall system throughout our game benchmarking process was solid. Mainboard temperatures never ran in excess of 50°C (that’s likely due to the excellent natural ventilation of the Q500L with its dust filters removed) and the case’s metal outer chassis was only slightly warm to the touch even after an hour of intermittent load testing. The acrylic panel of the Q500L sits very close to the top of the NH-P1 cooler, which was a concern, but it never got too toasty. Even the cooler itself wasn’t too hot to touch.
As a final exercise in sadism, we slapped Prime95’s torture test on and left this machine to stew for half an hour. Did it crash? No, shockingly enough. Temperatures peaked at exactly 100°C about eight minutes in and sat there for the remainder of the test, taking roughly 12 minutes to return to idle numbers afterward. Needless to say, we were very pleased with this.
CLOSING REMARKS
Let’s call this build what it was: an unmitigated success, provided you don’t want tons of processing power or gaming capability. For a silent home office PC, though, this system works wonders. Solid, reliable performance without the slightest whisper of a fan was our goal, and we’re happy to say that goal has been achieved.
Mind you, we imagine we’d have seen a better performance with a few fans in here. Even a single case fan would likely have provided a significant boost to the cooling potential of the Q500L, creating airflow where there is currently none. We’d be slightly concerned about running this PC on a hot summer’s day, too; an overcast August afternoon is one thing, but if you live in a sunny state, keep the AC on.