I know what you mean, but to me in PC terms it's a case of either you keep it cool with air movement or it throttles the hardware to stop it overheating - so I would take noise over performance. The gaming PC I built has 5 Systems fans (two front pulling in, one back pull out, two top pulling out) plus the processor fan and the 1080i GPU has 3 fans. All that spinning air movement is still relatively quiet even under gaming load - but more importantly it never throttles from overheating - even at the moment when we are sweating ourselves to death doing nothing! What is noisy - the PS4 - damn that thing is like an Jumbo jet taking off at the moment when running a game - but that's because of the size, compact might be aesthetic but is poor for cooling and to make up for it they need a super high rev fan to pull max air through. The ultimate solution I think though is to just have the hardware somewhere else in the house like an attic - and either remote play it through a basic system or use bluetooth accessories and a very long HDMI lead!
RE: Do High End PC Systems Really Suck? - PC Tech - Part 48.