History of My Power Mac

Power Mac 1

Purchased 11/24/02 from CompUSA.
Mirrored Dual Door Power Mac G4 DP/1Ghz, 256MB RAM, 80GB disk, Radeon 9000.

Initial purchase	At first I don't notice anything unusual. Headaches follow within a few hours. My wife leaves the room. It's not the volume, it's the frequency.
Second day	Started researching noise issue on the web. Discovered excellent article on Accelerate Your Mac! about a power supply modification.
Power supply mod	Replaced the 60mm power supply fans as instructed. Definite reduction in noise, but still annoying.
Leather insert	Added a leather pad between the power supply fans and the case. Another reduction in noise. Computer is usuable now.
Case fan mod	Replaced the 120mm Delta case fan with a quieter Panaflo 120mm fan. This required some work with a Dremel tool to fit. Compuer is beautifully quiet now. The only noise remaining is at 120hz. Unfortunately, the fan becomes unstable within a day and eventually dies as I fuss with it.

The Panaflo makes the computer so blissfully quiet, that I cannot imagine going back. Yet, I can't risk buying another 120mm fan since this one died so quickly. So, I made a last ditch effort to exchange the computer in the hopes that the new one is quieter. It is. The new Power Mac is quiet enough to remove the headaches, but still louder than I would like.

So starts phase 2 where I hope to try mods which don't require physically changing the fans.

Power Mac 2

Brand new Power Mac exchanged for original.
Mirrored Dual Door Power Mac G4 DP/1Ghz, 256MB RAM, 80GB disk, Radeon 9000.
Seagate Barracude hard drive instead of previous IBM hard drive.
Package includes a thin Ethernet cable that wasn't in the other Power Mac. Hmmm...

Initial purchase/exchange	Immediately seems quieter. Seems to get buzzier over time though. Still no headaches though.
12/09/2002	I have applied the leather insert WITHOUT replacing the fans. I would call my Power Mac "normal" now. It's neither quiet nor annoying. I would consider it average compared to my last two Windows machines that I built. One was much louder, one was a little bit quiet.er
12/15/2002	Power Mac has sporadically been getting noisy again. I have not identified the source yet, although a recent analysis showed a new spike at 85Hz. What the heck? I did add another leather insert underneath the 120mm fan which helped. However, it's been quiet again the last two days.
12/17/2002	Decided to try the Panaflo 120mm case fan again. It sounds exactly the same as the first time, stuttering and all. Since this Power Mac is already pretty quiet, the noise difference is not so dramatic. I also noticed that this Delta 120mm case fan spins quite smoothly in my hand. The previous one vibrated much more.
12/19/2002	Applied the PAX.mate noise insulation. It was easy to install, but the effect hasn't been dramatic. It definitely softened the noise quite a bit. My Power Mac is already pretty quiet with all of the previous mods, so maybe this isn't a fair test. Worth it, not sure I would recommend it.

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