anyone got a g5 yet? if so how loud is it?

[andyjamesnelson]

i,m really really intrested in how loud these beasts are? i bet there still quite loud, 9 fans! even if there are all computer controlled.. surely we all want a silent computer???? i wonder if the dual model is twice as loud as the single cpu models and if the 1.6 model is the quietest..so if you have one let me know how loud it is please, cheers andy.

[Chaszmyr]

I don't know why everyone keeps saying they think these machines are really loud, Apple already said the G5 is three times quieter than the Power Mac G4

[Lancetx]

I don't get this stereotype either. Don't people understand that when you have 9 smaller fans that it means they won't have to run at as high of an RPM as you would have to with less? That's what makes all of the noise, the RPMs of the fans, not the quantity of them. I'm quite sure these 9 fans will run quieter than 4 or 5 larger fans would. I also read a review recently in Macworld I believe that also testified that it was definitely quieter than the G4 PowerMacs are. If Apple will hurry up and get these G5s in stores and customer's hands, hopefully some of these types of stereotypes and FUD about them will go away...

[adamfilip]

typically a larger fan will be quiter then a small fan when outputting the same CFM

in my old PC i have a 120mm fan spinning slowly at like 2000 rpm. i cant really hear it.. but i can feel the air.

i also had a small cpu fan that could do 9000 rpm sounds like a frick'n turbine i cna hear it down the hall..

i dont know where im going with this..

but more slow fans will definately be quiter then a few fast fans

[Spart]

Originally posted by andyjamesnelson
i,m really really intrested in how loud these beasts are?

Currently, they're about the quietest mass market desktop tower out there. That's really saying something.

Originally posted by andyjamesnelson
i bet there still quite loud, 9 fans! even if there are all computer controlled.. surely we all want a silent computer????

Not at all. While there may be 9 fans in the dual models, the spin at a very low RPM. This makes for less turbulence, which means less noise. While they have the same or better airflow than your typical Dell with, say, four or so fans, the airflow is spread out more. If a fan runs at half of its maximum rated RPM and it is three times quieter, then two of those fans running at half speed will not be as loud as one fan running at full speed.

Originally posted by andyjamesnelson
i wonder if the dual model is twice as loud as the single cpu models and if the 1.6 model is the quietest..

No, why would it be? There's much more in a computer than a processor, my friend. The G5 has two fans per CPU, two fans on the power supply, one fan for the PCI cards, and two fans for the drives. So moving to a dual setup adds on another two fans. These fans are extraordinarily quiet, however (they're the ones that Apple designed specifically for this purpose) and the extra two should be of little to no consequence, regarding noise levels.

And just to put it all in perspective, Jonathan Ive (Apple's head design guru) was quoted in a Q&A session with Wired as saying he had to put his ear to the case to hear it running during the interview. It's that quiet.

[andyjamesnelson]

ok ok . 9 big fans or small fans whatever.. all i wanted to hear was from sombody who as actually listened to one.. just to confirm that they are quite. .. is there any user out there who has one that would like to share the silence:)?

[Dont Hurt Me]

It may be great airflow & great for fan makers but the new g5 is still ugly as a duckling and bigger then hell. I love the g5 but think they could have done a better job then the cheese gr......... anyways i have hopes for some day a consumer upgradeable mac that dont look like hell or make me have to buy a new desk to put it in.

[twentyeight7]

didnt jobs say the exact DB in the keynote i dont know what it is but i think he said it go to apple.com and watch the keynote

[NavyIntel007]

Although it has nine fans, they don't all go at the same time like a gaming PC. Depending on sensor readings they kick on and off.

[Xero]

ugh, some people are so impatient

believe me this will be the topic of at least 6 new threads once the G5s have arrived.:o

[solvs]

Somewhere around 35 dBa. I believe that's what Jobs said. For the whole computer! If true, that's quieter than a lot of CPU coolers out there.

Especially those 100 W P4s. :eek:

[rainman::|:|]

Apple used custom-designed ultraslow fans, add that to how much criticism Apple got over the windtunnel... i'll bet the G5 is very quiet. They've worked very hard on this. You don't have to have huge fans blasting out air if you design the enclosure properly...

pnw

[Dont Hurt Me]

since heat rises i dont see why they didnt design a machine to vent upwards, use less fans,in a case that was smaller rather then what they have. perhaps it was just a crash program to get the g5 into a machine since motorola was doing such a poor poor job of advancing the g4. i dont know which but they sure did a 180 in design, style and philosophy.

[Frohickey]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me since heat rises i dont see why they didnt design a machine to vent upwards, use less fans,in a case that was smaller rather then what they have.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt... it was called the G4 Cube.

Lets see... cramming 2 G5 processors so that the heat rises, but in a smaller box. That would mean a box thats been folded in the middle, between the PCI slots and the processors. So, which do you put on the bottom? If its the processors, then it cooks the PCI slots, and it doesn't get cooled enough. If its the PCI slots, then it cooks the processors and cooks itself.

[actionslacks]

Obviously I haven't gotten mine yet, but as I have mentioned in other threads - this thing is super quiet.

I stood right next to it as it rendered Pixar aniation at their booth at SIGGRAPH and it was the quietest computer I have ever heard while rendering.

It will be great for video and qudio editors who need a quiet machine.

[Flynnstone]

I have a DP 867 MDD at work. It was definitely a wind tunnel, to put it gently. I did the power supply fan upgrade and it was much quieter.
But I was @ WWDC and used some G5s. It was simply quiet. Much better than my MDD.
So in my opinion, the G5 is much quieter than the G4 offerings.
I hope that helps. :)

I'll be ordering mine shortly. (the Dual 2G )

[acj]

Bigger fans are not only quiter in dB per airflow, but they sound quieter due to the nature of hearing different frequencies. Lower frequencies sound less appearant than high pitched ones.

Also, you have to have about 10 times the fans for it to sound twice as loud. So if you go to a fan that's a little better than half as loud, and use 10 of them instead of one, it will be quiter. Why?

doubling the amount of fans gives you 3 more dB. 3 dB is a doubling of sound pressure. 10dB sounds twice as loud. So compared to one fan, 2 fans is 3 dB louder, 4 fans is 6 dB louder, 8 fans is 9 dB louder, still not twice as loud sounding.

Long story short, more slow fans better.
If Apple wasn'y limited by making pretty computers, they could have achieved this with 2 120mm fans.

[reflex]

Originally posted by actionslacks
I stood right next to it as it rendered Pixar aniation at their booth at SIGGRAPH and it was the quietest computer I have ever heard while rendering.

Listening to it in a (presumably) loud environment doesn't really give a good indication of how noticeable it would be in my my relatively quiet office (where the computer is the main source of noise).

[CmdrLaForge]

Anybody there who actually listened ?
I mean that was teh questio. Not explanations about why 9 fans are not as noisy as 4 and so on ?
Anyone who already received his G5 and listened ?

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by acj
If Apple wasn'y limited by making pretty computers, they could have achieved this with 2 120mm fans.

But if you only had two fans, you wouldn't have the same ability to independently set the fan speed depending on the temperature of the component it was cooling. It would be a much less efficient design.

Mike.

[daveg5]

i think they are 3 times quieter when the processors are not doing anything as the processor slows down in megahertz speed, but i bet when really under a load at full processor speed they are as loud as the dual 1.25 g4's, but i must admit i have not heard them

[andyjamesnelson]

look dudes all this tech chat is fine but lets focus on the question shall we? has anyone got one at home in a quite enviroment and then listened to it? i,m sure apple have said its going to be quite and whatever with the physics of fans.. lets just hear it from an actual user..! how quite is your machine at home? :)

[daveg5]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
since heat rises i dont see why they didnt design a machine to vent upwards, use less fans,in a case that was smaller rather then what they have. perhaps it was just a crash program to get the g5 into a machine since motorola was doing such a poor poor job of advancing the g4. i dont know which but they sure did a 180 in design, style and philosophy.
thats exactly what i was thinking

[Frohickey]

Originally posted by andyjamesnelson
look dudes all this tech chat is fine but lets focus on the question shall we? has anyone got one at home in a quite enviroment and then listened to it? i,m sure apple have said its going to be quite and whatever with the physics of fans.. lets just hear it from an actual user..! how quite is your machine at home? :)

Quiet... not quite. Two different things.

Yes, its quiet.

[panphage]

Look into the G5 threads on page one. Someone there got his and said it's damn quiet.

[actionslacks]

Originally posted by reflex
Listening to it in a (presumably) loud environment doesn't really give a good indication of how noticeable it would be in my my relatively quiet office (where the computer is the main source of noise).

Sure. But my head was literally right next to it. And there were only 2 other people standing there talking. It was not that loud in there.

Go ahead and be a skeptic, but this thing is freaking quiet.

[daveg5]

just heard a 1.6 at idle at the apple store next to a dual g4.
it is 1/3 as loud at idle but then it is not at 1.6 when at idle .
from what i could gather, is that as the processor load increases, heat increases, fans spin faster, and it gets louder. from my limited time with the g5, i think it is about half as quiet. now a dual 2ghz playing quake3 with both processors at full, may not be that much quieter. we still have to wait for that quiet, but the 1.6 is noticeably quieter i can safely say,.

[daveg5]

Originally posted by daveg5
thats exactly what i was thinking
not only that.
dust is going to be a problem, apple may cut a slot opening in the top toward the front so you can drop disposable dust filters in there to protect the g5 innards from dust.
the handles were way too big for the 39.2 pound machine, but the quality of the G5 is second to none. opening the older g4 is far easier and more elegant though.

[TEG]

I was just at the local Fry's Electronics in Willsonville, Oregon, where they have a 1.6 G5 on display. It is set up next to several G4s and PowerBooks. I started a conversation with the sales man, taking much of the knowledge I have learned here, and he took the machine apart and showed it to me, and explained all the functions (Like I don't know how a Computer is Organized). Then I started talking about fan noise, he showed me the airflow reflector that fits insode and told me how several people commented on how quiet it is. He put it back together and started it up, and I put my ear right next to the front grill.... I said "Damn, My Cat purrs louder than that!" It was incredible, reminded me of the (Old) iMac, how quiet it was.... the noise was even less than my old Apple ][+ and that didn't even have a fan. My PowerBook makes about 50x the ammount of noise at the G5. Well he started up several Apps (System Profiler, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop) about 15 of them, btw all splashed with in 1.5 bounces and those with loading screens were up almost instantly. (Including System Profiler which had scaned the machine before the window opened). The Fans kicked up, it wasn't very loud, about the same as an early G4, or personally my very old 386... basicly no more noise than a normal p/s fan would generate. It was awesome, and much quieter than its neighbors the G4 MDD. I'd estimate that the Dual would act similar, but just a smidge louder.

Want any more info???

TEG

[legion]

Taking all the posts with a grain of salt, if the G5 is supremely quiet, the harddrives would negate this. The only posting that I've seen that seems to be a realistic one is one that was posted by steveG5 on MacAddict who picked up a 1.6 G5 from Stanford and has played with it for a few days. He had posted that overall the machine was quite, but the harddrive was annoyingly loud (most likely due to the frequency of the sound emitted) As great as it would be for everything to run solid state (so we didn't have spinning platters), personal computers are not at that level yet and a fact of life is there will be writing to the hard drive during heavy tasks (including rendering, even if you loaded the G5 up with RAM)

I'd also wonder if the G5's interior (with it's cleanliness) isn't a bit of a sounding chamber. It has all the qualities necessary with plenty of reflective surfaces and the "cheese grater" front and backs acting as sound openings.

[Frohickey]

Originally posted by daveg5
now a dual 2ghz playing quake3 with both processors at full, may not be that much quieter. we still have to wait for that quiet, but the 1.6 is noticeably quieter i can safely say,.

A dual 2GHz playing Quake3... you do not need the computer to be quiet. You will have the speaker cranked out to full, and you'd be yelling "I FRAGGED YA! WHO'S DA MAN!!! WHO'S DA MAN!!!"

:D :D :D

[G5orbust]

I just saw a G5 in person today and the thing was like a whisper. I had to put my ear right up against the front grille just to hear the fan noise, which on its own is remarkably low key.

Very nice job on Apple's part.

[iJon]

well ill tell you how loud a 1.8 is tomorrow. but honestly i thought my MDD powermac was real quiet. so maybe i have low expectations.

iJon

[Frohickey]

Originally posted by iJon
well ill tell you how loud a 1.8 is tomorrow. but honestly i thought my MDD powermac was real quiet. so maybe i have low expectations.

iJon

Whats a MDD PowerMac?

[iJon]

Originally posted by Frohickey
Whats a MDD PowerMac?
mirrored drive door. the last g4 powermac they made.

iJon

[mrjamin]

my pc has 6 fans in it (2 in the psu, one on the cpu, one on the video card, 2 for the case - all silent, mostly Zalmans). It runs at about 38dba and i can hardly hear a thing at the moment, steve jobs said the new G5s run at ~35dba. A silent room is about 25dba, so they're pretty damn quiet if the stats are true.

[Flynnstone]

Originally posted by Frohickey
Whats a MDD PowerMac?

I saw the term "MDD" and for a while I was wondering the same.
I was using a dual 867 mirror drive door for a while before I figured out MDD :D

[actionslacks]

Originally posted by legion


I'd also wonder if the G5's interior (with it's cleanliness) isn't a bit of a sounding chamber. It has all the qualities necessary with plenty of reflective surfaces and the "cheese grater" front and backs acting as sound openings.

no. it is designed that way for heat dissipation AND noise.