The loudest part of the Mac Pro is generally the hard drive.
I have a Mac Pro 2008 and it's relatively silent, except when the fans initially burst on boot before the drivers kick in.
Compared to my former dual 867 G4 MDD (Loudest. Mac. Ever.) the Mac Pro is extremely quiet.
Why does the Mac Pro have a "fan startup surge"? My MacBook Pro doesn't, the system comes up with the fans at 2000rpm (idle). Since this thing goes from silent at 2000rpm to F22 takeoff at 6200rpm, I'm sure I'm not hearing things. I guess a better question would be why the MBP doesn't...Is it just the GPU fan that does that, or do the case fans do it too?
Thanks, i've had enough of Microsoft. I bought a mac mini on trial and love it, especially the fact of no noise!!!