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Gary King

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 14, 2004
495
1
How loud are the Macs? Like, is the iMac louder than the Mac Mini? Is the PowerMac the loudest?

I especially want to know where the Mac Mini lies on the 'loudness' scale, out of all the Macs :)
 

StarbucksSam

macrumors 65816
Nov 21, 2004
1,433
5
Washington, D.C.
Having experienced only machines my family and I have owned:

the PowerMac G5 is the loudest by far - when the fans go on
the PowerBook G4 is pretty quiet - we have two of them and they vary a bit
the iMac G5 is pretty quiet but if the fans go on full it can get loud

from what I understand, however, the Mac Mini is pretty quiet but I've only spent ten minutes on it at the Apple Store.

I actually used an iBook at the Apple Store and I thought it was rather loud.
 

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Well, i just got my Mac Mini, and it is practically silent. Honestly. Even when transfering 15 GB of files like I did last night, I didn't hear the hard drive at all, to the point that I thought it might have gone to sleep. The only time it makes noise is when it's reading a CD or DVD at first.

My dad has a G5 PowerMac, though, and it's a little bit louder, but not by much. It's one of the first 1.6Ghz SP's, and it runs really quiet too. Much quieter than our old G4's and G3's, and definitely quieter than my G4 PowerBook which blasts its fan every five minutes.
 

shadowmoses

macrumors 68000
Mar 6, 2005
1,821
0
Mac mini's are the quietest desktop they are silent and stay very cool. The notebooks are all pretty much silent. The eMac, and powermacs are quite noisy but thats in comparison to silent computers they are far quieter than most dell rigs i have seen and the iMac G5's are quiet but not silent.

ShadoW :cool:
 

andcraig

macrumors regular
May 28, 2005
107
0
Powermac G5's sound like small lawnmowers
like..we have a computer lab at school with about 25 of them and if all the ones in your area bring the fans up to speed at the same time its extremely bothersome.

My powerbook G4 (which just arrived yesterday..and i'm quite quite happy with it) so far has only made sound when i'm burning a DVD or accessing something on a disc..and its only for a few seconds, not a consistent sound.

haven't had much experience with imac or mac mini..sadly.
 
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