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They do give quite a good whirr after extended periods and you could probably fry an egg on the top of the monitor, but nothing beats my old pentium 4 PC for sheer volume produced whilst gaming, I've heard planes coming in to land that were quieter.
 
I haven't done any super-intensive gaming on mine yet, but in the games I've played (mainly WoW), the fans have not been noticeable.
 
Yeah, I thought it was a good question!

I'm just messing...

Gaming is going to be one of the "noisier" things you do thanks to the heavy lifting and heating/cooling/fans.

The iMac has a big screen to paint, a desktop proc, but many mobile parts otherwise. The form factor "works against itself" a little in regards to heat and gaming....and there's a performance to noise/heat/power tradeoff decision you can make in terms of the 2.7 i5 and i7 processor options.

I do see it as less of an issue with gaming than say, audio recording, since you'll probably have the volume turned up or on to mask any noise.
 
They do get very hot, sorry scrub that, after an evening of 4 hours WoW on a 27" i7 you couldn't touch the top edge of the aluminium.
The iMac does seem to be rigged to take the heat though I've never heard my fans ramp up, even when the heat did seem rediculous.

So installed SMC fan control, set up a profile for WoW with the fans turned upto about 1500rpm and the machine kept much cooler for very little noise.
I use headphones anyways, so any external noise is moot.
 
They do get very hot, sorry scrub that, after an evening of 4 hours WoW on a 27" i7 you couldn't touch the top edge of the aluminium.
The iMac does seem to be rigged to take the heat though I've never heard my fans ramp up, even when the heat did seem rediculous.

So installed SMC fan control, set up a profile for WoW with the fans turned upto about 1500rpm and the machine kept much cooler for very little noise.
I use headphones anyways, so any external noise is moot.

That's good to hear. I'm not surprised it gets hot, as long as it's not going in my lap it's no problem. It's all about how well it handles the heat. From what you say, it sounds like it does it safely and silently.
 
That's good to hear. I'm not surprised it gets hot, as long as it's not going in my lap it's no problem. It's all about how well it handles the heat. From what you say, it sounds like it does it safely and silently.

I'm just saying..."silently" is a dangerous term but no doubt "quietly" should apply I'd think.
 
I guess its all relevant to what you are coming from... or used to!!!

Compared to my old Shuttle the iMac is a godsend .... daily computing cant hear a squeak ... early days with gaming, but even then I'm hard pressed to hear anything ... if anything there is a slight whisper but with the audio at a moderate level is easily soaked out ...

But i agree that thing gets damn hot ... great in winter i guess :)
 
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