2015 high-end iMac fan noise silent? negligible?

[ambientdaw]

I would LOVE some advice on keeping my soon-to-be-purchased and very first! iMac as quiet as possible; My late-2011 17" MBP has a fan that is more of a whine than a whir and I cannot work with it. I became hyper-sensitive to hi frequency sounds 2 years ago and I am working on some very quiet music mixes, so the fan noise is as loud or louder than the music!

I understand the smaller fan of the MBP would be higher pitched than a larger iMac fan so perhaps it does need to be 100% silent, we will see. I want to get the 4GHz / 1TB SSD / M395 2GB / and update to 24GB RAM. I will not be running games or editing much video or photoshop work, very minimally. I will just be running a few CPU intensive VST's with Ableton Live (specifically Omnisphere, Kontakt, and Ozone) at low latency while recording 2-4 audio tracks inputs. For rendering I don't care if it is noisy.

So, do I need to rethink this?

 

[maflynn]

I have a M395 based iMac, and I'd say its nearly silent.

 

[ambientdaw]

Would the i7 run hotter and noisier than the i5?

Would a <4GHz chip run quieter/cooler than the 4GHz?

 

[Malus120]

Would the i7 run hotter and noisier than the i5?

Would a <4GHz chip run quieter/cooler than the 4GHz?

While I've heard the 2015 models are a tad quieter (Skylake cooler than Haswel/slightly cooler AMD parts), I can tell you that my maxed out 2014 model's fan can get noticeable... when installing a new version of office... :/
Photo editing, gaming, video editing or do anything truly intensive makes the fans even more noticeable.

 

[Barnclos]

I have similar machine - 4GHz / 512 GB SSD / M395 2GB / 24GB RAM - and the machine is effectively silent for anything where the CPU is less than 200-300%.
When the fan does speed up, I don't so much hear the fan motor (whirring, whining type noise), rather it's the airflow (blowing noise) that is most noticeable.

 

[maflynn]

rather it's the airflow (blowing noise) that is most noticeable.

That's what I notice as well, on those occasions that I''m pushing my iMac harder

 

[1 iron]

I can barely hear my fan when doing lite work (1200 rpm) but watching videos in flash or ripping/converting movies gets the fan going. It bugs me so much, I start wishing steve jobs was still around to yell at engineers to fix this prior to going on sale. This wasn't an issue on my 2011 iMac.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
4 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

 

[TheBro72]

I can barely hear my fan when doing lite work (1200 rpm) but watching videos in flash or ripping/converting movies gets the fan going. It bugs me so much, I start wishing steve jobs was still around to yell at engineers to fix this prior to going on sale. This wasn't an issue on my 2011 iMac.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
4 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Yeah, when watching 4/5K content or ripping films etc the fans kicks in and is quite noisy. The upside is the mac will convert a full film in about 15 mins!! Apart from the two examples given, in almost any other scenario the machine is really quiet.

 

[cynics]

With your sensitivity and specific work flow this is going to be too subjective for us to give you a 100% answer.

I think if it were me, I would line up some real work, buy the iMac and immediately throw your real world situations at it. From there you can utilize Apples return policy if necessary.

Its unfortunate your workload seems rather intensive because a Mac Mini placed far away or a new fanless MacBook would be silent however I doubt they will have the oomph you need.

Out of curiosity how input latency sensitive is your work? People will drop jaw but an AppleTV has a relatively low latency across a fast network, I can even play city building type games with no problem but also with no fan noise...I know that maybe ridiculous but in the event you happen to have an ATV you could try it for free really quick.

EDIT: Hmm I just tried editing a video really quick via AppleTV, its an exercise of patience for sure lol....

 

[ambientdaw]

I set my buffer to 64 samples for very low latency while playing VST's from a keyboard, using an RME audio interface.

 

[bmcgrath]

I don't find my loud at all (mid spec). When it's being pushed you get a faint air blowing sound but nothing like a whirring noise of a fan going full blast. Overall - very quiet machine especially compared to the mid 2011 that this retina machine replaced!

 

[CWallace]

I have the late 2015 with the i7 and R395X and I would say my machine is very quiet, even when doing CPU/GPU intensive tasks whereas my 2014 model with the i7 and R295X would have noticeable fan noise in such situations.

 

[Appleaker]

The 2016 iMac would likely run even more silent due to the massive change in GPU architecture meaning it produces less heat when used.

 

[ambientdaw]

Wish I could have waited until Sep-Oct. My 2011 MBP just started getting tired in the last month or so. Put in an SSD 6 months ago and it breathed new life into it. But I am starting to throw some new VST's at it and it is showing resistance.