How noisy is a mac pro

Is anyone using a Mac pro for a Home theater -media centre PC?
How noisy is it?

I am thinking to put a Mac in my living room and was wondering if a mac pro is "civilized" enough for this use...

any mac ive ever seen makes zero noise at all. i cant even hear the fans on my mini or macbook. id assume the mac pro would be the same.

that would be a nice media center for your living room

btw, it's Mac or mac, not MAC, when referring to the computer...that seems to upset some of the more seasoned users

bcooper0125 said:

btw, it's Mac or mac, not MAC, when referring to the computer...that seems to upset some of the more seasoned users

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hellooo!!

bcooper0125 said:

btw, it's Mac or mac, not MAC, when referring to the computer...that seems to upset some of the more seasoned users

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And that's because MAC [address] is an acronym for Media Access Control. You can read all about MAC Addresses here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

JDS

PS: Of course, and this may not be at all Politically Correct to say on a Mac board, but back in my high school days, MAC was also an acronym that referred to Macintosh computers. It, rather rudely, stood for Morons Against Computer-literacy. But that was a looooong time ago, back in the DOS days.

My PowerMac G5 is pretty noisy and my PowerMac G4 was even worse! I'm assuming that the Mac Pro has had some modifications to make it quieter, I'll find out in a week or two

For a real answer, would wait until you get a response from someone with a Mac Pro.

The sound from a mini or a notebook would have no bearing on what to expect from a Mac Pro with it's Xeon processors and the fans required for those vs notebook processors, not to mention the fairly drastic video card difference and the fan from the power supply to handle all the hardware the Mac Pro is capable of running internally.

I'll be able to test this out next week when I receive mine. I'll have 3 hard drives in it with a 1900XT graphics card so I don't think it gets more noisy then that.

Great. I will be waiting for your testing jmexx as this is most probably the configuration I will have my self (If i end up gettign the pro!)

Thanks,

I think Apple learned its lesson with the G4 mirrored-door tower, otherwise known as the Wind Tunnel.

I have one, and it was so noisy it awoke the dead. Apple had to spend a fortune on free fan modifications. The mod made it quieter, but stealthy it ain't. I doubt Apple would go through that again.

Be aware that a recent SMC Firmware Update v1.1 causes the fans to run quite loudly for about a minute when coming out of Sleep. Not sure if everyone is experiencing this, but I am, and others have reported it as well. Apple may or may not be planning on coming out with a new update to change this behavior.

In my workplace we have 4 Mac Pros running in a 12ft x 12 ft area, you can hardly hear them. So I think one on its own should not present an issue!

It can't be worse than my own Wind Tunnel,

bloody old Windows (Compaq)

Got my Mac Pro this past December and my G4 next to it sounds like a jumbo jet compared to it. Seriously, this thing is super quiet.

R. Fink

Brown Study said:

I think Apple learned its lesson with the G4 mirrored-door tower, otherwise known as the Wind Tunnel.

I have one, and it was so noisy it awoke the dead. Apple had to spend a fortune on free fan modifications. The mod made it quieter, but stealthy it ain't. I doubt Apple would go through that again.

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Anywhere I could hear it without the fan mod? I wanna hear just how noisy it is...

Trust me, you don't want to hear how noisy it is. It sounds almost like a nuclear bomb warning, just constant! It's a real ****-off...

Hello jmexx,

I thought you said you were getting yours next week! Did you get it already? is it that bad?

I have a Mac Pro... it is very, very quiet.

The SMC update is an annoying change to the startup fan operation.

Fans rev up, as mentioned, when coming out of sleep but then ramp back to quiet.

I sure hope Apple makes an update to their update...soon.

I have a Mac Pro and it is extremely quiet. You can hear the hard drive make noise from time to time. Apple usually includes noisy hard drives with their comps. But the other 2 hard drives I have added are silent. You have to be really close to the machine to hear it at all. Sometimes when the screen is off, I don't know if the computer is running or asleep. That's how quiet it is. I like it!

I did the fan firmware update and I don't get loud fans when coming out of sleep at all. They are always constant. But when the fans went up to full speed during the actual update, I thought the machine was going to take off and fly away. Wow!

I sure wish that my fans didn't rev up when coming out of sleep. It annoys me so much that I don't even use sleep any more- I shut down the system when I walk away from it. The roaring fans completely destroy the elegance of the Mac Pro (at least to me).

My PowerMac G5 is the second quietest computer I have ever owned, and the Mac Pro case seems to be just a smallish redesign of the PowerMac G5.

The quietest one I have ever owned? It was a custom build, by an outfit that specialized in quiet computers. Almost completely inaudible. It is still a great machine to this day. I keep it as my main Linux box, and as my Windows box for when I need Windows (which happens from time to time).