tech: Quiet PC Ultra-Quiet Xbox 360 Console

I am a big, big fan of the Xbox 360. It’s got some cracking games, the New Xbox Experience makes the console even easier to use, and the online marketplace is a real winner. There’s just one problem: the noise, oh God the noise! Turning on a 360 in a quiet living room is like listening to a jet plane take off, and don’t even get me started on the noise that DVD drive makes in the middle of games or, even worse, movies.

Of course, there’s good reason for the noise - the components that power the 360 get stupendously hot in use, and the fan noise is necessary to keep even more Xboxes from overheating and falling over with the legendary Red Ring Of Death.

Well, here to solve my problems is the Quiet PC Ultra-Quiet Xbox 360. It’s an Xbox 360 that’s been expertly transferred out of its plastic housing and into this beast, a huge chassis with lots of cooling and lots of sound dampening. You can check it out at QuietPC here.

The chassis is big, black and brushed aluminium. It looks sleek, even if it is improbably larger than a PS3. There’s a large fan at the rear, and internally there’s much more room for air to flow around. The DVD drive is covered in sound-dampening material, and the components are all mounted using rubber grommets to minimise noise.

Quiet PC has transplanted all the Xbox components from the original case into this one.

On the rear there are the network, USB and power sockets, as well as that big fan. On the front there’s the power button and the Guide lights. The DVD drive is mounted vertically here, and the USB ports are hidden away behind this flap.

In use, there’s no doubt that the Ultra-Quiet XBox is, well, ultra quiet. Standard system nooise is practically non-existent. Have a listen for yourself.

There is still some noise from the DVD drive, albeit a lot less than you would otherwise get. The reduced noise means you can actually heat quiet moments in your favourite games, rather than losing all the dialogue to the whirrrrr.

But the UltraQuiet Xbox is not without its problems. Hiding the USB ports away seems a bit nonsensical when they could just have been mounted nice and flush on the front. The eject button for the DVD drive is in the centre of the case, rather than next to the DVD drive. And, let’s face it, this thing is a hulk. It’s not going to look right in everyone’s living room.

Then, of course, there’s the price. At £415 for the Elite version of the console, that’s fully double the cost of just buying one in the shops. You can just buy the case and the soundproofing kit for £80 from QuietPC, but you’ll void your warranty opening up your existing Xbox.

So it’s a really tough call here. The product itself is good, even with a few niggles, and it certainly makes a big difference to the Xbox using experience to have it so much quieter. However, it’s too expensive to be anything short of a luxury. For the £415 price tag for the Quiet Elite, you could buy a Playstation 3 for quiet gaming and movie watching, and still have enough cash to buy an Xbox 360 Arcade for those 360-exclusive titles. As such, Quiet PC gets a well deserved 3*s, but misses the 5* mark by just a few quid.