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New iMacs and fan noise

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0087215

Cancelled
Original poster
Sep 20, 2008
495
36
Hey guys,

Someone on this forum posted a complaint about his new iMac being pretty noisy in comparance with his previous 2.8 Ghz iMac.

Could any of the owners of the new 2.93/3.06Ghz iMac comment on this issue? Do the new machines get really hot and make awful noise? Or are they pretty silent?

The noise is a real dealbreaker for me...
 
I haven't spent that much time with mine yet, but I was actually shocked at how little noise it was making. In fact I was a bit concerned that I couldn't hear any fan noise at all, I presumed it would kick on when I was running 3DMark or 3DVantage benchmarking. I'm so used to the gazillion fans on my PC I actually get nervous when I *don't* hear fans on lol.
 
rittchard said:
I haven't spent that much time with mine yet, but I was actually shocked at how little noise it was making. In fact I was a bit concerned that I couldn't hear any fan noise at all, I presumed it would kick on when I was running 3DMark or 3DVantage benchmarking. I'm so used to the gazillion fans on my PC I actually get nervous when I *don't* hear fans on lol.
Click to expand...

lol :D but rittchard, you are they guy who came up with those benchmarks, aren't you? The new G130 graphic card seems to be pretty good as you told us... Have you played some games on it?? Have you watched some 1080p movies on your new iMac??? I am really curious about the performance of that machine...
What processor do you have by the way? 3.06Ghz???
 
0087215 said:
lol :D but rittchard, you are they guy who came up with those benchmarks, aren't you? The new G130 graphic card seems to be pretty good as you told us... Have you played some games on it?? Have you watched some 1080p movies on your new iMac??? I am really curious about the performance of that machine...
What processor do you have by the way? 3.06Ghz???
Click to expand...
\

Like I said I haven't had time to do much with it yet - spent most of the time installing Windows and running benchmarks :) And yes, this is the 3.06GHz.

So, again, to answer your original question, during intensive benchmarking the machine didn't get particularly hot (some hot air coming off the top) and there was no noise. I could barely hear the hard drive as well, even when I put my ear up to the bottom. If anything, I was impressed at how quiet the whole machine was running. BTW no one ever says much about it but I think the speakers on this machine are great (particularly compared to my 2-yr old 20" model).

That said, I'll spend more "quality" time this weekend, probably install some games, etc. to push it harder. So far, I am very happy with it, but it's still the honeymoon period so I don't want to give false impressions.
 
rittchard said:
\

Like I said I haven't had time to do much with it yet - spent most of the time installing Windows and running benchmarks :) And yes, this is the 3.06GHz.

So, again, to answer your original question, during intensive benchmarking the machine didn't get particularly hot (some hot air coming off the top) and there was no noise. I could barely hear the hard drive as well, even when I put my ear up to the bottom. If anything, I was impressed at how quiet the whole machine was running. BTW no one ever says much about it but I think the speakers on this machine are great (particularly compared to my 2-yr old 20" model).

That said, I'll spend more "quality" time this weekend, probably install some games, etc. to push it harder. So far, I am very happy with it, but it's still the honeymoon period so I don't want to give false impressions.
Click to expand...

Haha.. thanks a lot, mate!!! I am about to order an iMac for the birthday of my little brother... But the problem is that I want to get him the best machine, so I decided to wait for the release of the 4850 in iMacs... Now you tell us how great the G130 is and I am thinking about ordering his iMac right now, because I need to give it to him in two weeks.... So... Thanks a lot for your benchmarking, and I will be waiting for more info which you'll be able to provide!!!!
 
I just got a new 2.93 iMac today (with GT120), and i can tell you that the fan noise isn't noticable. This is my first iMac (had a macbook white some time ago) and I'm really impressed at how quiet it is. Can't hear the harddrive either :)
 
Crackman said:
I just got a new 2.93 iMac today (with GT120), and i can tell you that the fan noise isn't noticable. This is my first iMac (had a macbook white some time ago) and I'm really impressed at how quiet it is. Can't hear the harddrive either :)
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Thanks.... :) I hope you love your new iMac!! I you can, post some benchmarks... We are all curious about how fast those machines are.... ;)
 
We know at the moment that the 4850 is better than the G130. However, thats not to say the G130 isn't good! I'm going to be getting that graphics card in my iMac, but I don't have many games to play on it to do any benchmarking, (I only have Sims 2 and Tomb Raider Anniversary, both of which are hardly 'next gen' games) I'll be getting sims 3 soon so I hope it holds out for that.

I hope that the G130 is great for my sake, and your brothers (if you get it him) and also anyone else who gets the iMac with that card.
 
Old Imacs and fan noise?

The 2.8's are very quiet, is that peoples experience?
 
rittchard said:
I haven't spent that much time with mine yet, but I was actually shocked at how little noise it was making. In fact I was a bit concerned that I couldn't hear any fan noise at all, I presumed it would kick on when I was running 3DMark or 3DVantage benchmarking. I'm so used to the gazillion fans on my PC I actually get nervous when I *don't* hear fans on lol.
Click to expand...

But the new ones don't have anything different compared to last month's ones right? So if I get a refurbished old one it should really hopefully be just like yours?
 
Pretty Good Position To Comment On This

Yesterday I returned last weeks 3.06 ghz imac for this weeks :p . Although this new unit is not "loud" by any means, I can and do indeed hear the hard drive on this unit at times.

The 1TB drives are Western Digital Caviar Black HDD. When you go from a 8MB cache 500 GB HDD (standard 1 processor) to a 32MB cache 1 TB HDD (with 2 processors on the hard drive) it's only natural that a little more "sound" comes with it. It's a moot point in my opinion as it's a much nicer, bigger, faster hard drive that is still imho and experience shockingly quiet and impressive.

I do also hear the fans kick in on this unit more than I did on the previous model. From what I read that is a good thing and intentional though. There is probably going to be more heat in these models than the others at least on the higher end models. But so far the top of the display has not got nearly as hot as my older model - that model would get hot to the touch. This one has not been that way thus far. Again imho neither the here and there fan and/or HDD sounds are anything to complain about. But again I've only had about 1 day experience with this new machine. I'll be doing more observing and benchmarking once I get Windows (Vista 64 bit) installed later today.
 
On my pre-update iMac 2,66 I can hear a fan spinning when being in a relatively quiet room. I guess that's normal, right? Doesn't botter me that much. But you can definitely hear it. But when is it considered fan-noise? Just curious. Some pc's can be very, very loud, but I expect the average Mac-owner to be more critical of noise.
 
itommyboy said:
Yesterday I returned last weeks 3.06 ghz imac for this weeks :p . Although this new unit is not "loud" by any means, I can and do indeed hear the hard drive on this unit at times.

The 1TB drives are Western Digital Caviar Black HDD. When you go from a 8MB cache 500 GB HDD (standard 1 processor) to a 32MB cache 1 TB HDD (with 2 processors on the hard drive) it's only natural that a little more "sound" comes with it. It's a moot point in my opinion as it's a much nicer, bigger, faster hard drive that is still imho and experience shockingly quiet and impressive.

I do also hear the fans kick in on this unit more than I did on the previous model. From what I read that is a good thing and intentional though. There is probably going to be more heat in these models than the others at least on the higher end models. But so far the top of the display has not got nearly as hot as my older model - that model would get hot to the touch. This one has not been that way thus far. Again imho neither the here and there fan and/or HDD sounds are anything to complain about. But again I've only had about 1 day experience with this new machine. I'll be doing more observing and benchmarking once I get Windows (Vista 64 bit) installed later today.
Click to expand...

What about the previous 3.06? And how are the previous 2.8's? Also wonder how the 2.93's are for people.
 
i dont think the cpu is going to make much of a difference in fan noise, i would think the gpu would be more of an issue especially with the 4850s.
 
I bought a 2.8 last weekend and returned it for a 2.93 this week. I can't tell any difference between the 2. I've now got the iMac sitting next to my old PC as my wife uses the PC for work. I don't want to force her to switch in 1 day, so I'm going to leave them both set up for comfort.k I can't hear the Mac over the PC, but it's a custom built PC that is about 6 years old with quite a few fans in it.
 
randy98mtu said:
I bought a 2.8 last weekend and returned it for a 2.93 this week. I can't tell any difference between the 2. I've now got the iMac sitting next to my old PC as my wife uses the PC for work. I don't want to force her to switch in 1 day, so I'm going to leave them both set up for comfort.k I can't hear the Mac over the PC, but it's a custom built PC that is about 6 years old with quite a few fans in it.
Click to expand...

How would you compare the 2, as far as performance? Worth the extra bills for the 2.93? Thank you :)
 
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