Mac Pro vibrations?

[shinji]

When you touch the outside of your mac pro case, can you feel it vibrating? I never noticed this before, but today I installed a new hard drive, and touching the outside of my case I can feel it vibrating somewhat.

Is that the fan blowing harder or what? I don't hear any new sounds...

 

[ironic23]

how bad of vibrations are you talking about? vibrations that cause the whole machine to rattle and move? or just subtle vibrations?

i think the cause of the vibrations may be due to the hard disks spinning and also contributions from the fans.

i have 2 HDs in my MP and my fans are set at 950rpm but my machine never vibrates to the extent that it is noticable. if i put my palm on the case of the machine, i can feel some vibration but its bad at all.

if you could explain the situation a bit more, maybe some other members can give you some insight.

cheers.

 

[shinji]

No not enough to make the entire machine rattle and move. I guess I just never noticed before the mac pro vibrates to the touch?

I'm not sure how to quantify vibration. It kind of goes in waves and is subtle, yeah. I can't hear it doing anything unusual.

Much less than like a massage chair, for example. But more than my Dell used to. I first noticed it because I can feel a very slight vibration in my keyboard (the Mac Pro is on my desk next to the display, and I have a slide-out keyboard tray). We're talking very slight, but noticeable. I don't see it visibly shaking or anything, nor can I hear it.

 

[ironic23]

Try taking that new HD that you installed out. See if it still vibrates as much. If not, then you know why its rattling more - the new HD spinning and contributing to the vibration of the whole machine.

I don't really see how adding a new HD can cause that 'much more' vibration. The design of the trays for the HDs and how its position looks like it should damp the vibration fairly well. Do you have a 10k rpm drive? Or just a standard 7200rpm drive?

I guess if its not doing anything deterimental or causing disruptions, you should just try to live with it. Put some rubber isolators on the feet of your MP to damp the vibration. If it gets really bad, maybe give Apple a call? Or holler out in this thread.

Good luck! Cheers.

Edit: you don't happen to have the internal speakers of the MP playing some song do you?

 

[shinji]

thanks- will do. I think what's actually causing it is the fan though, not sure.

HD would have to be vibrating pretty hardcore to be causing me to feel it on the other side of the case, wouldn't it?

and nah I'm using external speakers

 

[SDDave2007]

I have a MacPro with 3 HD's installed... and you can barely feel anything when u touch the case.. nor can you hardly hear anything.... big diff from my howling PC

 

[shinji]

You can feel it slightly humming/vibrating though when you hold your hand next to the area near the Apple logo though, right?

The hd, ironic23 btw, is the new WD 750 gb...fastest 7200 rpm out there according to tomshardware.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/06/record-making_hard_disk/page9.html

Could that be it though? How could the hd be vibrating so much I feel it on the edge of the case...it's not directly up against the case.

 

[Sun Baked]

You can try some of the cork strips/pads to damp out some of the vibration, hard surfaces and factory feet tend to not help in damping them out too much.

 

[shinji]

Yeah I may try that, SunBaked. Seems it is the hard drive and other people have reported the same prob https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/241176/

Tomorrow what I'll do is try reseating it, and if that doesn't fix it I'll look into some kind of washer system I can get that won't mess up the alignment with the drive into the mobo.

 

[Sun Baked]

You might be able to get a couple cork tiles at a flooring/hardware store.

Something solid with sound attenuation properties to sit under the handles to damp down the vibrations going through the case.

Just be happy that you don't have a couple vibrations setting up a nice beat frequency, because that gets really loud and annoying with a constant rattly woo-woo-woo.

 

[THX1139]

This is a well documented problem that occurs when you start installing extra drives that vibrate.Just be glad that yours isn't doing the harmonic resonance thing... do a search for resonance and MacPro and you'll know what I'm talking about. When I installed my new Western Digital drives, I wound up with a sound that reminded me of an airplane flying in the distance. The buzz would get louder and then start to go away, then come back again. It was driving me crazy! What I wound up doing was buying some hard density foam rubber and cutting it into squares. I jammed those squares into the spaces between the drives and the mount. I also added washer and rubber O-rings and that seemed to help. Now that my machine is several months old and I added the sound proofing, I rarely get the humming noise. Every once in a while, I have to tug on the handle or knock on the side of the case and the sound goes away.

 

[tribe3]

This is a well documented problem that occurs when you start installing extra drives that vibrate.Just be glad that yours isn't doing the harmonic resonance thing... do a search for resonance and MacPro and you'll know what I'm talking about. When I installed my new Western Digital drives, I wound up with a sound that reminded me of an airplane flying in the distance. The buzz would get louder and then start to go away, then come back again. It was driving me crazy! What I wound up doing was buying some hard density foam rubber and cutting it into squares. I jammed those squares into the spaces between the drives and the mount. I also added washer and rubber O-rings and that seemed to help. Now that my machine is several months old and I added the sound proofing, I rarely get the humming noise. Every once in a while, I have to tug on the handle or knock on the side of the case and the sound goes away.

You know I got that same resonance thing. It went away partially by opening the door latch.

I got rid of it by tightening the HDDs screws to the skids really well. The screws that come with the mac Pro have a very shallow phillips thread and it's not easy to get them properly tight without shredding the screw. I found a screwdriver that had a better fit, but you can also use the screws that come with the HDDs. It never came back again and I used no rubber washers.