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Is Fusion Drive noisy?
- Thread starter RoryO
- Start date
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Some are more sensitive to noise than others.
I am the former type.
I bought a 2013 imac 27" i5 3.4GHz 1TB base mode to try out. The hard drive noise is not bad but clearly audible. I haven't had a spinning drive in a machine for more than 3 years. I placed my order for a 2013 i7 imac with 512GB SSD on Wednesday. Will return this when it comes in.
FWIW: A mac mini under any kind of steady state load (15% or more) will make fan noise. At 1800 rpm it is very quiet - at 2600 not so quiet -- IMO od coirse
I am the former type.
I bought a 2013 imac 27" i5 3.4GHz 1TB base mode to try out. The hard drive noise is not bad but clearly audible. I haven't had a spinning drive in a machine for more than 3 years. I placed my order for a 2013 i7 imac with 512GB SSD on Wednesday. Will return this when it comes in.
FWIW: A mac mini under any kind of steady state load (15% or more) will make fan noise. At 1800 rpm it is very quiet - at 2600 not so quiet -- IMO od coirse
Just got my shipment in an hour ago...
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X4GB
1TB Fusion Drive
I was expecting some noise but nothing... It is an awesome machine. Couldn't be happier with my decision. It is fast and quiet. Love it!!
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2X4GB
1TB Fusion Drive
I was expecting some noise but nothing... It is an awesome machine. Couldn't be happier with my decision. It is fast and quiet. Love it!!
Do you have an SPL meter you can use to take some measurements? I'm curious if this is a loud drive, acute sensitivity, or a combination. If you can take measurements, and they are out of whack, it might be enough to spur Apple to replace your machine.
Well i let my order for the Fushiondrive continue..
If i find it to uncomfortable i will return the machine. But i guess i will be just fine with it as it is.
Where i live we have something called "open buy" which means that i can return any product within 2 weeks if im not happy with it.
Hopefully that wont happened since i dont wanna wait for a new machine to arrive.
Chears!
If i find it to uncomfortable i will return the machine. But i guess i will be just fine with it as it is.
Where i live we have something called "open buy" which means that i can return any product within 2 weeks if im not happy with it.
Hopefully that wont happened since i dont wanna wait for a new machine to arrive.
Chears!
What sort of noise did your 1TB drive make, can you explain it a little? I'm still trying to work out if this drive is unusual or I'm just not used to HDD after 4 months with an Macbook Air. Mine is a uniform sound never changing basically sounds like a fan, but approximately 2 - 3 times louder than the system fan at its normal speed.
I've now got a big read and write going on simultaneously and I can just hear some "working" noises as the head moves around, but it's almost entirely drowned out by the constant shhhhhhhhhhhh of the spining drive....
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I would love to hear your opinion when you get yours, please update the thread when it arrives..
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I have 14 days to return here in the UK so no problem sending it back. I'm just wondering if I got an unusual drive and a re-order would be different, I would really like the simplicity of the Fusion Drive.
I will try to record the sound tomorrow, I don't have a meter, but I should be able to do a recording with drive+fan, just fan, then off. so people may be able to comment on relative noise levels compared to their system.
I guess a simple question would be is the HDD spinning the noisiest thing in your iMac, because it certainly is in this one, by a margin.
I will.. But it will arrive at 16-18 oct :/
I think you got a really bad case of a soundy hdd.
I live in Europe and my iMac cost a fortune over here. So i expect a flawless machine.
FWIW -
I have an audio level meter ($100 kind of thing).
Measured at shoulder level - Imac about 2.0 feet in front of me
My room everything off = 33dBA
27" Late 2013 3.4GHz i5 Imac with 1TB 7200 spinning drive on = 34dBA
Only 1dB - but I can clearly hear it. Its not "bad". I just don't like it. Remeber also that our ears are much more sensitive to some noises than others (Fletcher Munson curves).
I put the meter about 6" from the base of the imac - about 35.5dBA
I have an audio level meter ($100 kind of thing).
Measured at shoulder level - Imac about 2.0 feet in front of me
My room everything off = 33dBA
27" Late 2013 3.4GHz i5 Imac with 1TB 7200 spinning drive on = 34dBA
Only 1dB - but I can clearly hear it. Its not "bad". I just don't like it. Remeber also that our ears are much more sensitive to some noises than others (Fletcher Munson curves).
I put the meter about 6" from the base of the imac - about 35.5dBA
Not exactly related to Fusion Drive but on topic I think: Do you guys know of utilities that can spin down/restart the HDD and fan(s) in the iMac. My iMac makes some noise (not at all bad compared to the monster in my office) and I'd like to see what's making it.
Thanks,
I think that Western Digital will be more noise friendly than Seagate HDD. I hop to get mine with WD HDD.
I would like to clarify for you people: the "Fusion Drive" is not a special piece of hardware. It's a perfectly normal hard drive. Therefore, if it's noisy, it has nothing to do with it being a fusion drive (which is software). If it's noisy, you should do the same thing you would do with any other excessively noisy hard drive: bring it in to your local service center and have them look at it (and potentially replace it). A loud hard drive is often indicative of a bad hard drive.
Can you hear the fan in your iMac? I set my HDD to spin down after 1 minute to determine what was making the noise, and I would say that the HDD (3TB Segate) is about 3 times the volume of the system fan at idle. How does that description compare with your experience?, and is yours 1 or 3 TB.
Thanks
Mine is a 1TB and I can hardly hear the fan spinning under normal use (browsing internet, using word/excel ewtc.). I have not yet experienced heavy workloads though.....
If any one else fancies comparing HDD vs Fan noise levels you can run the following in the terminal app:
sudo pmset -a disksleep 1
(enter your password)
(this means... 'power management set' for 'all profiles' the disksleep setting to 1 minute )
Then close all apps and wait for approximately 1 or 2 minutes until the disk spins down. It sometimes takes a while as the system may be accessing the disk in the background. You can restore the default settings in system preferences -> energy saver afterwards. (you can also run 'iostat -d -w 1' to watch disk access, you want all zeros for one minute before the disk will spin down)
Once you hear the disk spin down you can compare its noise with the remaining fan noise. My HDD is roughly 3 times as noisy as the fan. I'd be interested to hear anyone elses experience and if they have the 1TB or 3TB drive, 27 or 21 inch iMac...
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Yes, my fan noise is pretty quiet too, when I spin the drive down, and not an issue for me, it's the disk noise that I'm not sure I can live with. I guess the 1TB drive has a lot less spinning round inside and may be quieter. I'm considering returning my 3TB for the 1TB as a possible solution.... Thanks for you feedback
sudo pmset -a disksleep 1
(enter your password)
(this means... 'power management set' for 'all profiles' the disksleep setting to 1 minute )
Then close all apps and wait for approximately 1 or 2 minutes until the disk spins down. It sometimes takes a while as the system may be accessing the disk in the background. You can restore the default settings in system preferences -> energy saver afterwards. (you can also run 'iostat -d -w 1' to watch disk access, you want all zeros for one minute before the disk will spin down)
Once you hear the disk spin down you can compare its noise with the remaining fan noise. My HDD is roughly 3 times as noisy as the fan. I'd be interested to hear anyone elses experience and if they have the 1TB or 3TB drive, 27 or 21 inch iMac...
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Yes, my fan noise is pretty quiet too, when I spin the drive down, and not an issue for me, it's the disk noise that I'm not sure I can live with. I guess the 1TB drive has a lot less spinning round inside and may be quieter. I'm considering returning my 3TB for the 1TB as a possible solution.... Thanks for you feedback
I don't know if this is useful since I do not have a "modern" iMac (mid-2010) nor do I have a Fusion Drive but here goes...
First, there's often enough ambient noise in my room to make the idle noise from my HDD mostly unnoticeable. However, when it is mostly quiet I do hear it. When I ran the pmset command and hovered over my iMac I noticed something like an 80% reduction in sound when the HDD spun down. The fan is barely audible. BTW, the HDD is a 1TB non-Fusion WDC model.
That said, compared to the HDD in my Time Capsule it's pretty quiet. The HDD/fan in the TC is pretty darn loud and I'm happy that it doesn't have to run all the time.
Thanks, that is really usefull.
In essence it is just a question about the noise level of the HDD in an iMac, the link to the fusion drive is only because there may have been an opportunity in the implementation of Fusion Drive, to spin down the HDD part most of the time, but alas we only get the 'best of both worlds' in terms of storage and speed, not noise.
Thanks again, that helps me decide if I'm going to return it to see if I get a quieter drive, or just go SSD only...
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