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jamdr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 20, 2003
659
0
Bay Area
I have an eMac from a few generations ago and it's so loud! I mean way louder than my Dell tower and so loud it's hard to get to sleep in the same room when it's on. So I'm looking to replace it with somethin quieter, and also something capable of playing the Sime 2 when it comes out :) This eliminates the Mac mini and leaves the eMac and iMac G5. Is the current eMac as loud as the older ones? If so, is the iMac G5 as loud as the eMac? I want something like my iBook where it's silent 90% of the fan only comes on when it gets hot. And advice?
 

poundsmack

macrumors 6502
Apr 28, 2005
287
0
my new eMac is incredibly quiet. it might be the fan is going out on your older one, but the recent updated ones (or mine anyway) are rather quiet. dont knwo about the iMac though
 

Rod Rod

macrumors 68020
Sep 21, 2003
2,180
6
Las Vegas, NV
The older eMacs were always loud (it's not a matter of the fan going out). I used to have a 700MHz eMac and it was a bit of a pain (because I dislike fan noise). Apparently the newer eMacs are way quieter by comparison.

The iMac G5s can become loud if you run them at 100% CPU load for any length of time. Otherwise they're pretty much whisper quiet.
 

Miner Willy

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2004
107
0
Bradford, UK
Noisy eMac

Well, I have a 1.25ghz emac bought around this time last year and it's pretty damn loud. If you check out the "overclocking the emac" thread you'll find that there are quite a few people out there that will agree with me. As soon as my warranty runs out I'll be taking the puppy apart and putting a variable fan controller in to quieten it down a bit. It would seen that they just seem to run them full blast all the time.

It's possible they've rectified the issue in the new 1.42ghz models but I haven't seen one of those yet.
 

Savage Henry

macrumors 65816
I barely notice my G5 even peeping, which did surprise me. To me it's been quieter than the eMacs I've worked on (although I have to confess to not trying the new models). Also, I came from the G4 iMac which sometimes sounded like a Lynx helicopter wrestling a large grizzly bear in a large symphony hall. So anything would sond quieter than my old system.
 

jamdr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 20, 2003
659
0
Bay Area
Okay, thanks guys. I think I will probably go for the iMac then because the noise really starts to bother me. It's okay if it gets loud when it gets hot and has been running for a long time, I just don't like the eMac's design where it's always loud no matter what. I don't know why it doesn't have a variable-speed fan. I'd still be interested in hearing from anyone else with a new 1.42 GHz eMac, though. If Apple did fix the problem, I'd just as soon get one of those as an iMac.

Oh, and I like your avatar Rod Rod ;)
 

Rod Rod

macrumors 68020
Sep 21, 2003
2,180
6
Las Vegas, NV
jamdr said:
Oh, and I like your avatar Rod Rod ;)
Thanks . . . I'm guessing it'll be another 12 months before the "magical" 3GHz is attained, but hopefully it'll be sooner than that.

Regarding eMac noise, I've found that it's difficult to assess how noisy they are at a store because stores generally have all sorts of other noises, making it difficult to get an accurate idea of how the computer will sound at home.
 

SilverLight

macrumors newbie
May 11, 2005
14
0
Thanks when i saw the thread i thought my new imac might be noisy and that would have turned me really off but thanks for basically reasurring my faith in Apple
 

swingerofbirch

macrumors 68040
I was about to post this EXACT same question, and I thought I better search the forums instead, and I found this!

I have a 1 gigahertz superdrive emac that, to me, is too loud. I don't know which revision it is, but I bought it the day panther came out (October 24, 2003).

I was also wondering if an iMac would be quieter than this computer. I have in the past always used laptops, but as I seem to be too clumsy to care for one, I am now for the time being only purchasing desktops. And having gone from a laptop to this eMac, is quite annoying as far as the fan goes.

Most of the time it's fine, but I have an anxiety disorder, and I find that the fan noise can greatly exacerbate my anxiety and I will just have to put it to sleep regardless of what I am working on. Unlike the PCs that the rest of my family has, I can't just put the noisy CPU under the desk, since the CPU is my monitor.

I don't really NEED a new desktop for any other reason than this one is so loud.

So, how does the iMac G5 compare to THIS emac, and is there any way to make my emac quieter? I assume disabling the fan would make it too hot? How did those iMac G3s get away with no fan!!!!
 

PedroQ

macrumors member
May 12, 2005
31
0
My iMAc G5 is incredibly quiet, my fans hardly ever make noise. Except when I did the update to 10.4.1, when I restarted it sounded like it was going to take off, but that's it!
 

jimsmac

macrumors newbie
Jul 5, 2001
28
8
Miner Willy said:
Well, I have a 1.25ghz emac bought around this time last year and it's pretty damn loud. If you check out the "overclocking the emac" thread you'll find that there are quite a few people out there that will agree with me. As soon as my warranty runs out I'll be taking the puppy apart and putting a variable fan controller in to quieten it down a bit. It would seen that they just seem to run them full blast all the time.

It's possible they've rectified the issue in the new 1.42ghz models but I haven't seen one of those yet.


I have this exact eMac also and agree with you 100%. In fact if i don't have the study door closed i can here it's fan round the whole house at night. :(

Like you say, either i'm putting a variable fan controller in soon or it's going on ebay!!
 

melchior

macrumors 65816
Nov 17, 2002
1,237
115
i ran my imac g5 1.8ghz what i would call normally. itunes, pages, firefox, etc... fan always ran loud enough to annoy me. i sold the mac because of that and what to me was lacklustre performance overall.

while the formfactor is great I found the overall response disapointing.

AU$0.05 (Australia no longer has 1c or 2c coins as valid currency)
 
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