Mac Pro 2007 noise

[praetorx]

I'm looking to buy a MP 2x QC Xeon 2.66 off ebay (which I'll later upgrade to 2x 3Ghz), plan on using it to crunch data (folding, BOINC-ing, you name it).

I never owned a MP before but I do own a Xeon westmere workstation (2x 3.4ghz xeon x5690) which is VERY loud.
I want to know how loud a Mac Pro is. From what I've seen it's using more passive cooling than active so I'm expecting less noise from it.
My current workstation is housed in a supermicro server case with 6 redundant fans and is insanely loud.

 

[eljanitor]

Usually very quiet.

 

[papoopeepoo]

my MP 4,1 is quiet enough that i barely notice it while in my recording studio. Much quieter at full workload than any Mac I've used before.

 

[ActionableMango]

Mine is incredibly quiet, even under full load crunching video with all cores pegged for hours.

Granted, I only have 4 cores, so I don't know what the cooling fans have to do in a 12-core system. Some day I hope to plop a hexacore in there.