iMac 27" Noise

As I go through all the pros and cons of an iMac vs new MacPro I'm reminded that a previous iMac 27" (quad i7 from 2011) used to get pretty noisy (cooling fan) when doing some heavy rendering. Our MacMini is the same, and so is my MacBookPro 17".

Anytime you give them much load the fan speed increases pretty rapidly.

So, how quiet is the latest iMac 27" i7, especially the 4GB GPU version? Does it get all noisy during editing and rendering or is it still whisper quiet?

I've never once heard the fans on my 2008 MacPro spin up more than a whisper and the fan noise does bother me on the others, at least while editing and trying to check audio!

I own the IMac with the GTX 780M Video Card I can attest to it's being completely quiet even under duress.
I will record a quick video of it while rendering.

Hopefully tonight.
Arstechnica Article Reviewing the 2013 Imac.

"...it's very, very quiet. There's only a single fan inside, and the lack of a mechanical hard disk drive or any other moving parts makes for a near-silent desktop. The fan spun up a bit during benchmarking, but it didn't make very much noise—it was the loudest thing in the room, but my office is pretty quiet. During a multihour gaming session, the fan stayed spun up at a constant level, but the noise was still less than the previous-generation 27-inch iMac under load. As soon as the CPU and GPU dropped back to near-idle, the fan began to spin down, and the computer was near-silent again"

Thanks - I look forward to it.

The iMac is starting to make a little more sense to me as it has a CUDA GPU in it which is useful for After Effects Ray Trace. I'm currently rendering a sequence that's taking around 90 minutes per SECOND of final HD video.

Wish I'd kept my GTX285 for the MacPro now

I guess it's all academic now.... I just hit the buy button for a refurb iMac 27" i7 with 4GB GPU so I'll be able to see for myself on Tuesday / Wednesday.

The after effects ray trace benchmark test took almost two minutes

Congrats and enjoy

Stuff it full of ram and look at getting maybe a Lacie thunderbolt raid maybe

OK - so the iMac arrived yesterday, is stuffed full of ram and all apps installed.

Tests have been run and damn.... why did I wait so long?

I can confirm that even under heavy load (that makes the fans on my MacMini and MBP scream) the iMac keeps nice and quiet. I'm impressed.

Speed wise, it's about twice as fast as my MacPro (8 core 3,1 late 2008) at most things like rendering and exporting, especially to H264, but the icing on the cake is the CUDA GPU (4GB) for After Effects Ray Trace rendering. A 10 second intro I've been working on for a client takes 4.6 hours to render on the MacPro but only 2.5 MINUTES on the iMac. WOW! Even the new MacPro with 12 cores and dual GPU can't do this (not CUDA!).

Scenes in FCPX with real time green screen keying (even multilayer green screen) are playing back real time whereas the MacPro was stuttering and really needed to render. Again, WOW!

So far, so good. I'm impressed.

Wait until you render from a Thunderbolt drive thats another Wow moment.

What took 2 hours to render now takes less than 30 minutes.

And background renders fly across.

Latest Mavericks Cuda Drivers

www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-5.5.47-driver.html

< scratching head > I'm on 6.0.37....

Topher5 - quick question.....

I got this iMac 27" from the refurb store, so clearly there was a fault, someone returned it and it's been refurbed. I'm OK with that, I've had lots of refurbs before and zero problems. It's always worth saving the cash IMO.

However, I'm 'hearing' a strange problem that only occurs when I first start to render from After Effects using the Ray Tracing which makes lots of use of the CUDA drivers and GPU. It's sort of like a flick type click. This is the only time it happens. During normal editing with AE and FCPX etc it never happens.

Have you ever heard and clicking noises from your iMac?

Just to be clear, it's NOT HDD head type clicking, I k now exactly what HDDs sound like and this isn't it.

After a few seconds the clicking stops - and you never hear it again until the machine has been idle for a while and then you start a new render. It's sounding like it's a thermal thing, but who knows?

Just an FYI - not all macs from the refurb store were faulty. Many are ex-dem models or trade show display models, returns under distance selling regs, returns because not the right spec for end user etc... there should be no material difference between that and a new one. I reckon you're hearing some kind of thermal thing like you surmise.

Dave_EP wrote: < scratching head > I'm on 6.0.37....

Yes, 6.0.37 is the latest driver.