The previous tower was loud enough to interrupt a phone call. This one runs at 28 dB at the desk, measured. It edits twenty-megapixel raws without thinking, and it can hold a mid-sized language model in memory while doing it.
components
The case is a Fractal North in solid wood. Air intake through the front panel, two 140 mm intakes underneath, one rear exhaust. No top fans — the rule was: nothing pulling dust onto the table.
CPU on a large dual-tower cooler, two slow fans. GPU under-volted, fan curve flattened so it stays under 1200 rpm during normal editing. The drives are all NVMe; nothing spins.
what surprised me
Most of the noise budget went to power supply choice. A fan-stop unit at the wattage I needed didn't exist three years ago, and now it does. The system is silent below ~140 W, which is the entire working envelope for photo work.
The other lesson: cable management is acoustic. A messy back-panel costs 3–4 dB at the bezel.
what I'd change
Nothing structural. If I rebuilt today I'd take the same case and chase another two degrees off the GPU under-volt. The machine is for ten years.