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i never owned an imac are they quiet?

My older one is silent. My one and half year old one, you can hear the fan but its not that loud and I barely hear it now that I'm used to it (maybe its the hd and not the fan...).
 
I very rarely hear the fans, usually if I'm encoding video or something. And I can hear the Superdrive. Otherwise, it's pretty much silent.
 
Acorn said:
im kinda used to the silence of laptops and mac airs. how noisy is the imac
Click to expand...

It's close to silent but NOT noiseless - in a quiet room you can still hear the HD fan hum or HD, depending on the model...so don't buy it pretending it's as silent as a dead computer.

But yeah, it's pretty quiet and actually MUCH quieter than virtually any other desktop PC out there.
 
The fan is quiet enough that the HDD noise is almost distractingly loud by comparison. Just another reason to get an SSD.
 
Cant believe the guys who say their iMacs are quiet and can't hear them on a silent room...

iMacs are very noisy due to their HDDs. The fans are extraordinary silent, thats true. You won't hear them unless watching lots of youtube videos and flash and stuff. The 3.5 7.200rpm drives inside the iMacs ARE VERY NOISY. I have a 2009 27 inch which I had to return 3 times because I though the HD was wrong or something for being SO NOISY.

After those 3 I understood it was because they are 3.5 7.200rpm drives. I famed from laptops, which are 2.5 5.400rpm, which is a lot let noisy. I even returned my iMac more times due to the yellow tint issue and dead pixels. Guess what? Those others were still very noisy, and I am in a very quiet room. The noise was so loud you cannot even work. Every time you open an app or every couple seconds you could hear the drive spinning. Horrible.

So no, iMacs are not silent. Their HDDs are the main problem. Of course, as of 2010, iMacs can be bought with internal SSD, so that way you can avoid the noise and then yes, your iMac will be very quiet, as is mine thanks to a SSD I bought. It was the only solution.

iMacs are not silent people! Stop misleading.
 
You are being disrespectful by accusing us of misleading. I have no reason whatsoever to lie and I'm not in any way misleading anybody. I can't hear any noise on my iMac and that's the truth. I suggest that you edit your post, it is VERY DISRESPECTFUL.

Sensamic said:
Cant believe the guys who say their iMacs are quiet and can't hear them on a silent room...

iMacs are very noisy due to their HDDs. The fans are extraordinary silent, thats true. You won't hear them unless watching lots of youtube videos and flash and stuff. The 3.5 7.200rpm drives inside the iMacs ARE VERY NOISY. I have a 2009 27 inch which I had to return 3 times because I though the HD was wrong or something for being SO NOISY.

After those 3 I understood it was because they are 3.5 7.200rpm drives. I famed from laptops, which are 2.5 5.400rpm, which is a lot let noisy. I even returned my iMac more times due to the yellow tint issue and dead pixels. Guess what? Those others were still very noisy, and I am in a very quiet room. The noise was so loud you cannot even work. Every time you open an app or every couple seconds you could hear the drive spinning. Horrible.

So no, iMacs are not silent. Their HDDs are the main problem. Of course, as of 2010, iMacs can be bought with internal SSD, so that way you can avoid the noise and then yes, your iMac will be very quiet, as is mine thanks to a SSD I bought. It was the only solution.

iMacs are not silent people! Stop misleading.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, some of these replies are hilarious. I have a slight buzzing on my iMac which is somewhat annoying in a quiet room.

iMacs are quiet but make no mistake they are not silent.

The only time I can honestly say my iMac is silent is when it goes into deep sleep or is turned off.
 
In all fairness to Sensamic, it could be that he was unlucky, or Apple were using different drives at the time.

Put it this way though, if you buy a current model, the hard drive will be barely audible in a silent room (ie. you will not be able to hear it unless you listen carefully), and the fans make a quiet hum that is extremely quiet compared to most systems.
 
When the hard drive goes to sleep, my iMac is practically dead silent. Of course there's a little bit of airflow if you listen very closely, but it's so little that standing a few feet away from the machine, it's hard to tell if it is actually on (unless you can see it because of the screen, of course).

Under load, fan noise goes up slightly, but it takes a while. Even editing huge RAW files in Aperture, the fans almost never spin up noticably.

So if you want a computer that is about as silent as it gets (the only other option would be watercooling and putting the radiator in another room), get an iMac with a SSD drive.
If you just want a "a quiet computer", the normal HDD version will be perfectly fine. I guess in most rooms, you won't even be able to spot the HDD noise.
 
During normal/light use I can't hear the iMac at all with music on the first two bars of volume.

If there is no sound, you can hear a faint hum, but it's not loud at all. I wouldn't be able to hear if I was away from the computer.
 
I think the perceived noise is going to vary on the environment you work in and what you regularly do with your computer. The iMac isn't absolutely silent, but the fans aren't obnoxiously loud or distracting imo, even when encoding a movie. However, if you don't have a movie or music playing and are working in a completely silent room, then you'll hear some sound from the HDD, its fans, and possibly the superdrive if it is in use. As your work load increases, so will the heat and fan speeds. When I encode a movie (or batch of movies) in a completely silent room, I'd say the iMac is about as loud as a small desk fan. Even with that, I still don't hesitate to call my iMac quiet.
 
Imac is not a silent running machine unless you have only an SSD installed on it. On the other hand it depends on how quiet the environment is where you are using it and how sensitive your ears are.
 
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