how quiet are g5 powermacs?

[mak]

hi,

mac mini is meant to be super quiet

g5 imacs are meant to be quiet

g5 powermacs state they are whisper quiet but how quiet are they really when:

* idle

* running on a day to day basis for general tasks such as typing, internet and
listening to music

* working on programs such as photoshop / macromedia studio

* full blown heavy editing on movies and sound

thanks

 

[jsw]

My Rev A dual-2.0 PowerMac G5 is roughly as loud as one of those fan-powered air fresheners 95% of the time. I can hear it, but only when I'm listening for it. It doesn't intrude. 5% of the time, when fully loaded for compiling, etc., it can get rather loud. When at full blast, it can rival a Dustbuster (almost). But it almost never gets that loud, even during normal work, and is almost always "whisper quiet".

However, if you work in a warm environment, the fans will kick in more often. Even in the summer, my office stays below 70° F, and it's often a fair amount cooler in the winter.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Depends on the background level of noise – mine's in a busy office.

I rarely hear it over the chatter and printers, etc. except when it does a PS filter over an A4 300ppi image or distils a big document.

 

[tersono]

Darned quiet....

My G5 sits on the edge of my desk just a couple of feet away and I'm in a quiet environment (I work from home). As Apple say, it's whisper quiet - I'm barely aware of it when sitting at my desk. I cannot hear it at all from the other side of the room.

I also have a fanless firewire external HD - that actually makes more noise than the G5 most of the time.

What the computer is actually doing at the time doesn't affect the noise - idle or rendering 3D models, it's always quiet. You will _very_ occasionally hear a brief whirr from the fans, but it's only momentary. The one time when it does get loud is if you boot into single user mode, but given that most people only do that to run fsck, it's not an issue.