I'm very curious what the noise level of these new models are.

Avi

Oh jesus... The issue of sensitivity to electrical fields has been researched quite thoroughly, and there has been NO evidence to support that electrical fields are detectable by even people who claim to be sensitive. As the WHO has reported from their ongoing research: "The majority of studies indi...

Not banning, but limiting.. Some countries, at least in europe, have laws that signals from cellphone transmitters are not allowed to overlap eachother, wich sounds logical to me. I doubt they limit overlap because of health concerns. And in any case, cell phone coverage is far stronger, more compl...

I have a sister who is almost completely debilitated by her "sensitivity" to electro-magnetic fields, wireless signals, cell phones, etc. She basically can't function in the world. Though initially I was open to the idea that electrical fields could somehow be felt and adversely affect some people, ...

avi - that's impressive! It'd be interesting to see/ hear how they've silenced the HDD so well to see if any of that tech can be used in PCs I wished I had a really quiet room to make the measurements a little easier. I'm not sure why the hard drive noise seems so minimal. But in photos I've seen, ...

nice work avi - very informative! what was the quality of the HDD sound like? Any whine/ higher pitched sounds, were the seeks noticeable, if they were, were they soft or hard? Was the overall sound obtrusive in any way, even though it was very quiet? The hard drive is very very quiet. It's Western...

I received my 20" Intel iMac (containing the Western Digital 250 GB hard drive) and did some of my own sound level measurements with a B&K 2260 sound level meter. I measured about 20 dBA at operator position (about 23 inches or 60 cm from the front of the computer), derived from a series of measurem...

To MikeC: Do you think the ISO 9296 noise data typically is a good indicator of the noise emissions of computers? Is it necessary to do an SPCR review if the ISO 9296 noise data is published? Apple, Dell and probably other manufacturers publish noise data (at least for certain models). I'm wondering...

If any one is curious about the noise emissions of various apple models, you can see: http://images.apple.com/environment/resources/specs.html Not all models have ISO 9296 noise data, but the iMac Core Duo does. I think the G5 tower has ratings too, showing that is much noisier than the iMac Core Du...

Yeah, I think it is a bit of a lottery. Though I believe the Seagate hard drive is noisier than the Maxtor because of some "self check" routine, where the hard drive is doing some sort of diagnostic when idle. I remember experiencing this with a Seagate 160 GB hard drive I bought a couple of years a...

Wow, that was fast... SPCR has a review: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article306-page1.html "The iMac is by far the quietest computer I've ever used. It isn't completely silent, I estimate the light hush from the fans to be roughly equivalent to an 80mm Panaflo at 7V from about a foot or 18 inches ...

Thanks for the interesting BOM info. I don't think you can predict which hard drive you're going to get with an iMac. Some people have Seagates, others Maxtor (though Seagate has bought or will be buying Maxtor), even with the 160 GB model. Some models have Western Digital. From what I can tell, it'...

I ordered the 17-inch iMac Core Duo yesterday, and should have it in a couple of days. ($1175 at Amazon after $125 rebate). I'm an acoustical consultant, and have access to $10,000 B&K sound level meters. I plan on doing my own set of noise level measurements when I get it. What software is typicall...

I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the following: -Antec P150 case -Asus A8V motherboard -AMD X2 3800+ processor -Saphhire Atlantis Radeon 9600SE 128MB DDR AGP video card -Airnet 3+1 Port 1394 PCI Host Adapter -CORSAIR ValueSelect (2 x 512MB) DDR 400 (PC 3200) -Seagate Barracuda ST3160812AS...

Hello. I'm on the verge of putting together a new system after some really bad luck with the Shuttle Zen ST62k (consistently wrong FSB on boot up, and eventual refusal to boot - motherboard is RMA's to Shuttle). So I'm now contemplating the following: -Aopen EZ482 barebones -AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ -...