We are in a warehouse near downtown Brooklyn dubbed the Botcave. We’re talking with MakerBot Industry founders Bre Pettis, Zach “Hoeken” Smith, and Adam Mayer, and we’re contemplating a future where we can all instantly download, distribute, and manufacturer anything, anytime, anywhere. The implications are mind-boggling.

The road to utopia begins with a much cruder and smaller realization of this vision, however. The MakerBot guys hook up our laptop to the Cupcake, a $900 build-it-yourself 3D printer made of etched wood that is painted and lined with blue LEDs. It glows like something from a steampunk novel. We load up a design and start a print job. The gears and motors on this homegrown 3D fabricator sing. The extruder lays down string after string of hot, red plastic. Ten minutes later, Bre Pettis snaps a small toy violin off the building platform. “There,” he says, “the world’s smallest open-source violin.”

Anyone can build a gaming PC. Seriously, it’s easy. Minus a few technological bits of know-how here and there, there’s really nothing that tough about buying the fastest components you can afford and slapping them in whatever chassis you happen to have on hand. Done, right?

Maximum PC never shies away from a challenge, however, and Sr. Associate Editor Nathan Edwards has upped the ante for this month’s build-it. One of the key problems of building a tricked-out rig is that you’re sure to increase the ambient volume of the system as you increase its power. But I’m not here for a trade-off: No, I’ve accepted the challenge to build a gaming system that’s as quiet as a mouse.

Spoiler: It’s a lot harder than it seems.