How noisy are Mac Pros?

[voyagerd]

My 3,1 at 380-400% can run at a fixed fan speed of 1100rpm and be no warmer than 38C. I would say it is quiet. I can hear it but its more of a loud whisper than a jet taking off. The fans are of a much better design than what I am used to.

That sounds awesome, my Single 1.8GHz G5 had the fans at 3500RPM when doing anything. With my MBP, I had to set the fans to 7000RPM to keep it under 200F. I cleaned the thing out and applied new thermal paste and now the fans top out at at 4700RPM.

 

[Hmac]

So I take it they've become quieter over the past revisions?

My 4,1 with 4870 isn't really any noisier than my 1,1 with 4870.

 

[hakuryuu]

That sounds awesome, my Single 1.8GHz G5 had the fans at 3500RPM when doing anything. With my MBP, I had to set the fans to 7000RPM to keep it under 200F. I cleaned the thing out and applied new thermal paste and now the fans top out at at 4700RPM.

Holy mother of leg burning! Yeah my MBP sitting on my lap doing things that aren't flash sits at 104-122F depending on room temp and activities. If I am watching hulu or some other flash thing at full screen it rockets up and varies between 140-167F. This is all with the fan sitting at 4000RPM. Depending on what I am doing the fan speeds will get up to 6500rpm on its own but not often.

 

[moutian]

After replacing hd with ssd, it is almost silent. It is under my desktop. I cannot tell it is running. (The video card fan could be noisy, but I am using gt120)

 

[mif]

MacPro 4,1 is somewhat noisier than MacPro 1,1.

My 4,1 has extra two little boosta fans. 1600 percent processor utilisation sometimes kicks them really on. I guess.

 

[Max(IT)]

MacPro 4,1 is somewhat noisier than MacPro 1,1.

My 4,1 has extra two little boosta fans. 1600 percent processor utilisation sometimes kicks them really on. I guess.

I think the difference is made by the different vga card

 

[Pressure]

My PS3 Slim makes more noise, annoying.

But I am also overly sensitive to noise!

 

[gotzero]

I forgot to mention, my bedroom 3,1 has four mechanical HDDs and three graphics cards including a 4870. I am blown away by how quiet the whole system is. It sits right next to a Smart-UPS 1500, and the only thing you ever hear is the Smart-UPS occasionally changing its gate to make sure the power is clean.

 

[mrsir2009]

It should be pretty quiet, as long as ya look after it and clean the dust out of the vents every so often and all

 

[Phantom Gremlin]

(The video card fan could be noisy, but I am using gt120)

I'm confused by exactly what you're trying to say.

Is the gt120 passively cooled? Or do you mean the fan on it is quiet?

 

[wheezy]

I run BOINC on my computers, so I'm wondering how loud the 4,1 Mac Pros are with all cores at 100%.

When I use Handbrake it juices up to all 8 cores rocking and my fans don't even move. Mine is so silent. The other day my friend was over and he told me to stop talking once and just said 'Do you hear that?'. I was confused until he said 'It's like that thing is not even on!'. He's so used to PC's and their fans.

Right now the hottest part in the system is some of the memory banks at 160F, CPU's are at 99F, Ambient is 79F degrees inside. I'm not doing anything CPU intensive at the moment though.

FWIW my Samsung F1 drives (3 x 1TB) are 10-15 degrees cooler than anything I've ever had in there. (85-95F)

 

[Phantom Gremlin]

Right now the hottest part in the system is some of the memory banks at 160F, CPU's are at 99F, Ambient is 79F degrees inside. I'm not doing anything CPU intensive at the moment though.

I don't have a Mac Pro yet, so I'm too lazy to search and see what the expected temperatures for memory banks are, but ...

Off the cuff, I think 160F is way too hot for memory. That's about 71C, and is probably right at the limit for the devices.