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i never owned an imac are they quiet?

2010 21.5" here and it is quiet and not disturbing. Haven't had it any noise related problems with it and I've been having it for 8 months now.
 
I have a 2011 iMac 27 at work and it is quieter than say the motor of a refrigerator, the humming of an AC adapter, or the sounds of the traffic, conversations and birdsong outside my window. If I run it hard doing heavy data analysis the fan bumps up a notch and I hear it, but not to the point of distraction. Overall for me it is not an issue.

Besides, the physiology of the auditory system is based on detecting changes in sounds over time. Our nervous systems habituate very rapidly to monotonous sounds.
 
We have two 27" i7's which are quiet enough but by god they get toasty !! Seriously you could warm up your room with one :) with two running it's like a sauna.....
 
Judging by the replies to this thread, the OP need have no concerns regarding noise from iMacs. To all intents and purposes, they are pretty well silent. Obviously they can't be totally silent, containing a cooling fan and an HDD which are driven by electric motors. Does anyone remember the old tower PC's? Their noise resembled a road drill!!

Sensamic's comment that iMacs are very noisy is obviously untrue and a complete over exaggeration. He should have said "My machine was very noisy". On the other hand, he does seem to have been very unlucky with numerous HDD's, yellow screens and dead pixels - makes you think . . . . . ;)
 
I went from a PC to an iMac last october and was stunned by how quite it is.

I have to put my ear right up to it to hear it make any sort of noise.
 
Man you must have super sensitive hearing because I can't hear mine at all. We're not misleading people, everyone has different hearing, maybe your ears are more sensitive than ours.

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...
 
I've owned the current iMac 2.5 mid 2011 since mid July. Can't hear a sound out of it. I've run Handbrake on it for a huge file decode for twenty minutes(all four cores running at full), and I've never ever heard the fans.

Way quiter than my laptop macbook pro core2duo ever was.

Of course I am 62, and some of my high frequency hearing has gone never to return.
 
I know how much noise my brother's PC case makes. I call mine silent compared to that.

I have one of the white-plastic imacs. Sure, when it's silent in my room and I'm just browsing, it's not 100% silent. But it's very close to that. As soon as I start typing, or open my window for some fresh air, ambient noises are higher than the noise made by the iMac and I don't hear it anymore.
 
I have an i7 with an SSD and all I can hear is the normal HD noise which after a few minutes of inactivity spins down and then the machine goes almost silent.
 
I can never hear mine running, even when my room is dead quiet. If it weren’t for my ****** external HD clicking I might hear SOME noise from it but certainly nothing more than a fan going. Even when I have my CPU and RAM nearly maxed (a rare thing in itself) I can barely hear it.
 
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...

The OP is not asking if the imac is silent (which is not possible), he want to know how quite it is.

I had my imac for 2 months now with SSD, and have just changed back to stock hard drive again. I've set the fans to the lowest rpm on normal use which is very quiet, and not distracting at all in a quiet room.

The hard drive makes around the same noise as any other hard drives of its size and speed. But since the imac’s hard drive is only few feet in front of you rather than sitting in a tower farther away, the noise is a bit louder.

I don’t think you will find any other quieter machines on the market that can match the imac’s performance and form factor.
 
The Windows PC that I had prior to switching to my first iMac, was nicknamed the Tornado because of the fan noise. It was a box that I built myself, it was nice and all, but loud!

I've have two iMac's now and I love how they're so quiet. The only thing I hear is the HDD ever so slightly and if I am rendering video, I can hear the fans a little bit. But it's nothing compared to the "Tornado!"
 
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SandboxGeneral said:
The Windows PC that I had prior to switching to my first iMac, was nicknamed the Tornado because of the fan noise. It was a box that I built myself, it was nice and all, but loud!

I've have two iMac's now and I love how they're so quiet. The only thing I hear is the HDD ever slow slightly and if I am rendering video, I can hear the fans a little bit. But it's nothing compared to the "Tornado!"
Click to expand...

lol the tornado.
 
Sensamic said:
This is misleading people.

"You won't even know the iMac is running???". Really?? Are you being serious?????
Click to expand...

Well, I would disagree, I bought my first iMac this year, unfortunately mine is affected by the recall on the seagate hard disk which is now being replaced. However I can not tell the computer is running when the screen is off. I have to put my hand on the back case to check the warmth, if its warm I know its running, if its cold I know its off. My hard disk has been crashing this week and this was the only way I knew if my computer was running if it wouldn't turn on when pressing a key.

So I think it depends on ambient noise, my house is reasonably quiet, I have 2 computers, 1 PC which is fairly noisy and the mac. I can always tell my other computers are running by noise, I have to check the temp by touching the mac to see if its on. That should inform you enough how much difference in noise between a PC and a Mac. If my PC were off maybe I could hear the Mac. Sometimes I can hear the hard drive seeking or parking when I am using it, but very rarely hear the fans and only when I am running handbrake or something - I have i7 2011 iMac as a comparison.
 
27" iMac with 8GB - all I can hear is a faint hum and very faint fan noise. MUCH quieter than my old PC tower!
 
Prior to the hard drive recall my 2011 imac was very quiet. After the recall, not so much. I can hear the drive and now have a weird sound from time to time that is hard to describe.
 
just bought this older imac last night (intel 17" 2.0)...i was worried about noise also....but! this thing is almost completely silent...just a small fan sound,but very faint...
 
88 King said:
The OP is not asking if the imac is silent (which is not possible), he want to know how quite it is.

I had my imac for 2 months now with SSD, and have just changed back to stock hard drive again. I've set the fans to the lowest rpm on normal use which is very quiet, and not distracting at all in a quiet room.

The hard drive makes around the same noise as any other hard drives of its size and speed. But since the imac’s hard drive is only few feet in front of you rather than sitting in a tower farther away, the noise is a bit louder.

I don’t think you will find any other quieter machines on the market that can match the imac’s performance and form factor.
Click to expand...


in a quiet room i can hear the fans with the machine mostly idle, and when you load the CPU well it's not quiet at all.

If you need something really quiet you need a water cooled computer with SSD, or a noisier room/office :D, the noisiest part of my iMac is the hard drive (under light load), and then the fans (under high load)
 
Mine 27 2011 with only SSD is very quiet but not dead silent, I can hear the 3 fans (a soft and barely audible "ffffrrr" sound) spins at idle if I've the music off and the window close. Also yes, also if you put your hear 10-20cm from the bottom you can hear the "fffrrrr" from the fans but it's normal… the fans are here. The Macbook pro is more silent but on the iMac the fans never climb over the idle setting, on the macbook pro the fans climb speed over the idle more often :)
 
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