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iMac 27 inch i7 how much computer noise should you hear?

A

azza2988

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 30, 2010
58
0
i have had my imac little under a week i been looking for any faults so can change soon as. I have 1 dead pixel, not yellow tinting, no buzz or hum noise but not sure about the hard drive it could be just me.

So how quiet should a imac be? i hear the hard drive working wen sometimes going through sites or doing program stuff nothing extremely loud though just quietish sounds that last few sec which different from the standard leave alone computer noise, which i think is normal with any computer but since i found at thread on hard drive noises i not sure now.

so question is really how quiet should a iMac be? i guess you should be able to hear it running but wen you are doing stuff should you hear the hard drive at all? just bit paranoid at moment since first mac., cheers
 
What you are experiencing is normal. The hard drives in the recent iMacs are big and robust, and produce a little noise. All the complaining on the forums is probably a mix of very high standards/nitpicking and having faulty drives.

Do note the cases are all aluminum now, so the cases will transfer the hard drive noise better than a plastic case would.
 
I have had my i7 refurb for a week. Thankfully, the only the noise I hear is the HDD. No LCD noise at all.

I agree with TMRaven, a lot of people are just being nit-picky.
 
noticed with mine now with messing around i have the high pitch noise :( when brightness is between maximum or lowest setting gutted think give a week and see how i cope with it or wait till the refresh is out and go back then, this my 2nd imac since first was marked on screen wen opened up
 
One thing I've been thinking about since I began noticing odd random noises from my iMac...

I'm use to a PC, where the actual computer sat on the floor next to my desk 3 or 4 feet from my head, with just a monitor on top of the desk.

Now my iMac which is all contained in one is on top of the desk so the source of any noise is now about 2 feet from me.
 
found a problem i think again my hard drive is constantly making noise like its working but i doing nothin at all only started yesterday i got it last sunday arrh looks like maybe a trip to apple shop :(
 
try keeping a close eye on disk activity in activity monitor, it'll tell you how fast your hard drive is currently reading and writing and at what time.
 
i rebooted my imac just incase it was a issue with something installed. after reboot i left alone with Activity monitor on i getting high red spikes every so often while leaving alone and from hard drive just sounds like constantly working.

The first week i hardly ever heard my hard drive working then i was using photoshop and xcode a lot.

should i call apple care?
 
dexthageek said:
I have had my i7 refurb for a week. Thankfully, the only the noise I hear is the HDD. No LCD noise at all.

I agree with TMRaven, a lot of people are just being nit-picky.
Click to expand...

hi sorry to ask im just curious about lcd noise? i havent heard of that before with everyone talking about dead pixels or yellow tinting is this a lesser common thing an is it really bad?
 
I thought only crts made high-pitched noises. I havn't heard any noise from my lcd. The only noise I've really heard comes from the hard disk drive revving at 7200rpm-- and only that's apparent when you first wake the computer up from sleep and start hearing the hard drive spin up.
 
The high pitch noise is like an annoying dog whistle type sound i guess it not really loud but you know its there and just bugs you. I have the exact same problem with my iphone 3g. On my iMac if brightness setting is anyway where between lowest and maximum you start to hear a high pitch sound if highest you dont hear it and lowest you dont. on my iphone the brightness needs to be above 20% to kill the high pitch noise

do you reckon that my hard drive sounds bit abnormal? alot of the time working without my doing anyhting
 
Harddrive is fine

Stop being paranoid, I'm sure your harddrive is fine, there could be many reasons it makes noise while you don't think the computer is writing files.

It could be building caches, running cron, etc, and you are worrying way too much. It's fine.
 
azza2988 said:
i rebooted my imac just incase it was a issue with something installed. after reboot i left alone with Activity monitor on i getting high red spikes every so often while leaving alone and from hard drive just sounds like constantly working.

The first week i hardly ever heard my hard drive working then i was using photoshop and xcode a lot.

should i call apple care?
Click to expand...

high red spikes indicate Write OPs. when you say high - what rate are they at?
 
not to sure i did a diagnostic with holding D at start up someone said to me do that so i did , did the full one after restart something made a bad rattle noise don't know if was fan or hard drive but restart again and disappeared but didn't sound good
 
azza2988 said:
not to sure i did a diagnostic with holding D at start up someone said to me do that so i did , did the full one after restart something made a bad rattle noise don't know if was fan or hard drive but restart again and disappeared but didn't sound good
Click to expand...

could have been the optical drive. its worth taking it back to apple - but unless you can reproduce it directly they might not do anything. might have to make an appointment btw depending how busy they are.
 
Normal use my IMac makes no noise, but when I do stuff like Handbrake encodes, the fans kick in high gear and I hear them loud.
 
Kallel00 said:
Normal use my IMac makes no noise, but when I do stuff like Handbrake encodes, the fans kick in high gear and I hear them loud.
Click to expand...

hmm i can def hear my HDD ticking over, i generally do a lot of stuff. my machine sits at 400% CPU usage most of the time so the fans are slightly audible in a silent room. other then that its fine!
 
Seems like my HDD is bit abnormal to above 2 posts there is a rarely a time i dont hear it doing something it just weird the first 5 days i never heard it at all, next day blam it was there :( but there seems a lot of posts about noisy seagate HDD's
 
I had my first imac for a few weeks and heard the hard drive working and finally it failed and took other parts with it.. weeks later I got my new one and Im on week 2 with no issues
 
would it sound stupid though calling Apple care and saying my HDD making lot of noise after the 5th day of having it? and would they just give me a new one or just replace the parts? ps if do call apple care def tell them about the high pitch noise cause there few threads about it

"https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/923532/"
 
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