iMac Pro: Fan noise at idle :-(

Hello everyone,

I just purchased a refurbished iMac Pro. I'm coming from a 2017 iMac 21.5" 4K.

Overall this machine is great. The screen is phenomenal, the power it has more than abundant for my use case plus it has superb audio, webcam, microphones ...

... if it weren't for the fan noise.

It's currently idling at a very low temperature (avg CPU: 33°C) and the two fans are running at 1100 rpm which is the lowest possible.

The problem that I have is: I can hear it sitting in front of the iMac. I admit I live in a very quiet neighborhood and my room is also very virtually silent. But the thing is, in the same environment at idle I cannot hear my 2017 iMac at all. Only if I put my ears at the back of the machine at around 15 cm away from the vents I can notice the fan. That seems strange to me because the 2017's fan spin at a higher 1200 rpm compared to 1100 rpm of the iMac Pro.

I would like express my disappointed in Apple for overlooking silent operation so much. There is no reason to spin the fan at 1100 rpm if the computer is not doing anything. In fact, when running CPU heavy task the fan speed doesn't change at all. Clearly there is enough headroom for it to be spun at a virtually silent 800-900 rpm. So why set the base line to 1100 rpm?

Anyone experiencing the same behavior? Did I just get a faulty model? Or am I just being to sensitive?

It would have been a perfect machine for me but given its price tag, I cannot accept this constant fan noise and probably will have to return this overall fantastic machine.

Thank you and to all of you out there: stay healthy and practice social distancing,

SF6