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Mac Pro: Quiet or Noisy?

I just opened up my mac pro, and it's the ATI X1900XT fan that's making the noise (the hummmm). Altough I'm just surfing the web and doing nothing grafic intensive.
 
Here is my experience with a Mac Pro (completely stock config):

Under light load the Mac Pro's fans are loud compared to a Pentium 4 PC with optimized fans or a MacBook Pro. The good thing is that the noise did not increase under heavy load.

The fans make a constant hum which sounds like a propeller airplane.
With no ambient noise present it is annoying. However, it's no problem in a noisy office or while listening to music.

The power supply emits a buzzing noise, but it's not noticeable from normal distance.

Today, I went to an Apple shop and listened to some Mac Pros, as far as I was able to hear it in that rather loud environment they all make a humming noise.

I'd love to hear reports from people who have their Mac Pro in a quite room, because if some are "dead silent" I'll have to sent mine back.
 
Hmm this is kind of irritating. I was hoping to get a MacPro for my studio, one of the main reasons being that Macs are usually silent...
 
ljones said:
Well actually i will rarely ever use it. just the principle. But it also says 8x max in Toast, no media inserted into the drive. So... where is the 16x?????

Anyone else seeing this?
Click to expand...

are you burning as a DVD, because 8x DVD burn is considered fast....

as a regular CD, it would be more like 40-52x... although I really don't burn that fast myself....
 
Well the problem is you will always hear the most audiable part...If I switch on MacPro without HDD that's great! But with HDD's (1xWD 250Gb stock, 1x400Gb Samsung HD401LJ) I am annoyed by sound of them (specially Samsung is vibrating waaaay to much). Ofcourse only if it's quiet in room.

If you have X1900XT with stock cooler don't expect quiet MacPro...It's audiable quite good.
 
I have the stock config'd Mac Pro (so no noisy ATI card, sadly), and I'd say the humming of the computer is very slight. It resides in a fairly quiet room, and while it's audiable, it isn't distractingly so.

Now, the HD in there, on the other hand, is a heavy clicking machine. Spotlight indexing makes the HD sound like machine gun fire in the far distance. I'm not quite happy with that, but it's only all that noticeable because as a whole the machine is so quiet. My Superdrive is blazingly loud though... (the Pioneer, not the "Sony"), much louder than anything else. Even when I updated the firmware, and the fans were on full, they didn't compare to the explosion of sound that comes from my Superdrive. Annoying, but not enough to make me unhappy with my purchase.
 
My MP is quiet with one exception... I sometimes get a hum that rattles the whole side of the machine. I have attributed this to the hard drive. Quite annoying, but doesn't happen all the time, and a nice little knock kills it.
 
vinylator said:
Just got my Mac Pro. I updated from an iBook G3 that was absolutey silent. Like 0 decibels. This new Mac Pro, it's silent, but not THAT silent. I can hear it all the time, it's like a mmmmmmm sound, a constant humming. I think that it are the fans? Is that normal?
I did the EFI update, heard the fans take off like a jet, to return the way they are now, the constant humming. It sounds like my brothers dell. :)
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with this.. I had a powerbook G4 that sat right in front of me for three years, and you'd really have to listen for a fan but it was there _just_

My Mac Pro by comparison sounds like any other PC, at about the same level as a whisper (so yeah its whisper quiet but have you ever had someone whispering next to you all day?). But, it is sitting flush on a hardwood floor and the room itself is fairly 'live' so I'll probably get some ensolite (closed cell foam/camping mat) to put underneath it, and possibly build a little free-flow enclosure (its a home studio.)

Thanks to ljones, I know this is normal, you can hear the slight whir of the fans in his clip right before the F14 Tomcat launches out of his superdrive :)

Oh and I have the buzzing from the powersupply (if you stick your ear right to it), and I'm not unhappy with the machine at all, I just didn't think this topic was being completely accurate.
 
haha, 2 minutes after I posted I get this in software update:

"The SMC Firmware Update adjusts fan behavior in the Mac Pro. The updater application will be installed in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Please follow the instructions in the updater application to complete the process."

Will see how it goes!
 
My Mac Pro is very quiet, in fact, all the noise gets drowned by the PC a couple meters away from it. No X1900XT though... Ill chug one in there eventually.

I actually like the fact that HDDs make a sound, lets me know when the HDD is being accesed and it is kind of soothing.
 
Thats the other thing, I have an almost silent room, and good ears, so if there is ANY ambient noise then you can't hear the MAC, but to say it is silent is a bit misleading.

For example, key presses are louder, whispers are louder, but when you're recording a quiet vocal and your mac pro gets in the mix, the vocalist would be pretty pissed. :)

If I had a SPL tool I'd measure it for the sound guys, then compare against an older Dell, and my powerbook. Pretty sure the powerbook would be quieter and the Dell would be _slightly_ louder.

Do you have the buzzing at the powersupply (put your ear right to where the plug meets the box.)?

Edit: oh and the update didn't change things, although it did let me hear the fans at full noise, damn that thing sounds like a dustbuster when it cranks :)
 
This thing is so quite i can't even tell its on besides the light. The noise of my central air vent thats out in the hall way is louder than this thing.

Although when i'm under xp and gaming this thing does make some noise. But it is still nothing even close to my MDD.
 
knome said:
This thing is so quite i can't even tell its on besides the light. The noise of my central air vent thats out in the hall way is louder than this thing.

Although when i'm under xp and gaming this thing does make some noise. But it is still nothing even close to my MDD.
Click to expand...

Hey Knome, is your box sitting on carpet, in an open cupboard or something? How close do you have to get to it before you can hear it is on?

<<<< Getting a bit obsessive now hehe..
 
Silent it is not. The fan noise is rather noticeable with it sitting below my desk to my left - maybe 3-3.5 feet between my ear and the middle of the front grille. Louder than the Velocity Raptor AMD machine my parents have (in a similar placement), maybe a little louder than my G5/2.0, quieter than my old Quicksilver. And, of course, I never heard anything but the hard drive in my bridging-the-gap 17" iMac.
 
no its sitting on linoleum in a dorm room thats kept at 68 degrees, lol, now that i think about it i probably should be the one saying if its loud or not since my room is that cold.

Just so you know i have to literally put my ear against the case to hear the fans barely.
 
..and no history of hearing loss :) heheh.. I'd say the lino is cancelling some of the vibration-related resonance, and depending on what you have behind the machine (e.g. curtains) much of that first reflection might be caught too.

But yeah, I have a sound treated room, you could hear a pin drop in here, so any ambience (like the fan in the hallway) would definitely give you the perception that the machine is near-silent.

Or you could have a special freak machine :)
 
Mines rendering right now and all I can hear is this pc I use for the net.
My fans are silent, the only noise I get is when the Hd are accessed.
Dual 500gb and I can hear the drive I rip too a little:) if I shut my pc down and listen real hard:D
 
I have a solid concrete wall 6 inches from the back of the case. I think it has to do with the fact that my room is so cold.

But people have been saying that the computer resonates and so far i haven't heard any resonating at all. Occasionally i do hear the hard drive clanking away down there but hasn't happened to much because i replaced the start up drive.
 
Rendering`

Does anyone have a mac pro houseing the x1900 that does some hardcore rendering and compositing, mainly in FCP and Shake?

Hows the noise issue during an intensive render, or just while using any of the pro apps in general?
 
I haven't done heavy rendering, but I didn't notice a huge jump in CPU activity or sound from the fans. just ran like normal for me.
 
The Seagate 250gb drive that came with my macpro is wreckless for being noisy. It sounds awful.

I went out and bought the Western Digital Caviar 250gb SATA2 drive yesterday and used carbon copy cloner to transfer 1 drive to the other.

Now the machine is pretty much silent.

I decided to use the Seagate just as a spare scratch disk only (or I may relegate it to windows).
 
This is a bit louder than an ibook :p but it does have three large fans running all the time and probably one in the power supply. but it is very quiet compared to any other computer in the house especially that crappy emachines my dad has. I only hear some tik tik from the hdd when its doing a lot, and when i insert a dvd or cd i sure hear that drive. Basically i just usually have a nice calm whir when my room is quiet

edit: Interesting, i thought so but just checked. I have the standard 250gb hdd in this, and its not a Seagate, but a Western Digital, but i sure wouldn't say its super quiet when i do anything at all
 
NATO said:
High Speed CD/DVD Drives are loud because they're high speed - The Disc is spinning horrendously fast. Spinning something really really fast inside a small enclosure is inherently noisy. To solve the problem, get yourself a 2X CD-ROM Drive and put it in the secondary bay and use it from now on. You'll never know it's on!
Click to expand...

Good point, and may I add:

Most optical drives top out at 10,000 rpm, and will only achieve their maximum burn speed when the laser writer approaches the outer perimeter of the disc.

Even a perfectly balanced and smooth CD or DVD spinning at this rate will generate plenty of air movement, hence, the "sound" of a fan.

No doubt because of the overall quietness of the new Mac Pros this optical drive noise is revealed as well as that of the ATI X1900.

My 2G G5 has a very noisy power supply, due to two 60mm fans running at a constant 4000rpm (not firmware controlled)!:mad: :mad: :mad:
 
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