How loud should my iMac be?

[queshy]

Hello,

When I first got my 24" iMac, it seemed not to utter one small sound , probably because my old HP was like a jet cmopared to it (in terms of sound produced). Now that I'm working quitely in front of the computer in an otherwise silent room, I can tell that my iMac is turned on...there's a small sound coming from it (sounds like a fan on a low setting). I'm not sure if that's normal..when people say their iMacs are"whisper quiet", do they really mean SILENT? Or just very quiet in general?

 

[EricNau]

A quiet hum is normal - the fans are always running, and naturally, that makes some noise.

 

[balamw]

Another common noise is the "whine" from the switching power supply.

None of which even come close to the racket made by most PCs.

B

 

[queshy]

Hey, thanks for your replies. I don't have a "whine", it just sounds like a fan...but its pretty quiet. My old PC was SO loud. It was like a constant annoyance...at least with this computer,its very faint. Noticeable, but faint.

Sorry for all the threads im making...still making the transition from PC to Mac!

 

[balamw]

I'm really sensitive to high frequencies and can tell when a CRT has been left on in a quiet room. My 17" iMac is generally quiet, but does have an occasional soft whine when the temperature is "right". Many power supplies do this, but louder.

No-one else in my house can hear it though, so I just live with it.

B

 

[queshy]

Alright, I really dont know what to expect here. Is it supposed ot be always "silent"? As of now, I can definitely always hear it, and it's only perfectly silent when its sleeping or when its shut off. When it's turned on, I can hear it always, regardless of the brightness setting. Not as loud as my PC, by a long shot, but still tehre, and sort of irritating. Any way to fix it? Is my imac defective? I feel like it';s gotten louder over hte week that I had it, or maybe it's just my imagination :S

 

[blaster_boy]

Funny thing is, my imac 24 inch also seems to have started using his fans more, or perhaps I'm hearing them better. Still very quiet, tho, it doesn't really bother me.

I'll just boot up my old pc to compare the noise level... fairly certain I will mind even less afterwards.

If you are sitting in front of it, the front left part of the backpanel vent is very, very hot. Not painfully hot, but still very hot. The right side of the panel is almost cool.

I'm wondering if there is a process or such like that I started that keeps it running - guess I'll have to reboot to find out.

 

[queshy]

actually mine runs completely cool (not hot anywhere, or even warm for that matter). but you can hear it....still 100x quieter than my PC.

 

[miniConvert]

Yeah, iMac's aren't silent, but they're very quiet. Sounds like your iMac is running normally.

 

[queshy]

Great! I should just be happy I don;'t have a defective machine...

I'm sure I will get used to it. The product is so excellent that I guess I was expecting it to literally be "silent" . That would be very hard to do though considering how compact the design is. According to iStat nano (widget), Fan0 : 601 rpm, Fan 1: 1300 rpm Fan 2: 1000 rpm. Seem normal?

 

[blaster_boy]

I've just looked at my running processes using Activity Monitor and found out that I was running, for the last 12 days and 7 hours, a crashed iclip (beta 4) process that was consuming 150% of cpu.

No wonder my imac was running hot and making a bit of noise!

Back to normal for now.

Thanks for the tip - I also installed istat nano, it's really usefull ! My rpm's are about the same as yours :
Fan 0 : 598 rpm
Fan 1 : 1297 rpm
Fan 2 : 1000 rpm

Temperature is about 40 degrees celcius for the drive bay and gpu, and 31 degrees celcius for CPU A.

 

[queshy]

So how is the sound now?

My CPU is 26 and my GPU 30. Drive bay is 25 degrees celcius. Seems pretty normal.

 

[blaster_boy]

I've just got a hummmm now, and sometimes ofcourse the hard disk kicks in, but nothing special.

Overall, very silent.

My previous pc (a Fujitsu Siemens AMD pc) was REALLY loud, so I ain't complaining.

 

[queshy]

I wish we could quantitatively compare how loud the machines are. I dont know what a "hum" should sound like as I have no experience with other iMacs. If the room is silent and youre sitting right in front of it, you can hear like a "shhhhhhhh" ...sounds like fans spinning. Not loud, but noticeable.