When I install a 2nd drive soon I'm going to look into better isolation of the drive.) (And for the record the Mac Pro is on a carpeted floor currently, not on a hard desktop at ear-level.) But BTW - at times I've noticed an annoying buzz from the optical drive with some discs installed (for instance COD4 under Vista). But after about 1/2hr of COD4 at high settings you could hear an increase in fan noise/speed (primarily graphics card I think), but still quieter than previous towers I've had.) The only loud noise generated in typical use is from the Optical drive when copying (reading or writing) files, and that's normal for high-speed drives running at high RPM. (Single HD and not taxed heavily for long periods yet. As Mac Pro owners have said in the past, I was impressed at how quiet it typically runs. And for many common apps that don't utilize the extra cores, the single-CPU new model costs much less and would be a better value IMHO.) This was the first time I've actually had a Mac Pro to 'Play with'.

(That's about twice the price of left-over stock of 2008 Dual 2.8GHz Mac Pros. This configuration retails for nearly $5K - ouch. This page has my first impressions of setting up an 'Early 2009' Mac Pro Dual 2.66GHz/6GB RAM/ATI 4870/640GB HD/Airport Extreme card. Updated 2019 for New Links to Upgrade Articles (at bottom of page)

Updated for Bootcamp/Vista 64 install notes

2009 mac pro upgrade cpu