With a Mac Studio it isn't just relatively silent in almost cases it is silent.

With a PC you still have case fans running because even with modern motherboards they don't support switching them off at low temperature. You need to be running special Windows software.

And to cool the CPU you really need to be running AIO or dedicated water coolers which themselves will have 3 fans almost always running.

The fans in a max studio never actually turn off… they’re just really really quiet, and I’ve never managed to actually make the fans come off idle, even maxing out all cores.

It takes sustained usage for the heatsink to saturate, and then the fans ramp up quickly. They do stay next to silent otherwise.

> cool the CPU you really need to be running AIO or dedicated water coolers

There is no shortage of silent air coolers, such as the NH-D15, that are 20-30 dBA and undetectable unless the only noise in the room. It's usually stock case fans that are the culprit.

If you're running a PC with a dedicated GPU then you will have minimum 6 extra fans.

3 for the GPU and 3 for the case. The latter are pretty noisy and constantly run.

Sure, loud fans are loud but anyone that cares about noise is not using OEM fans, and picking up something from Noctua/Arctic. It's also common to upgrade to 140mm fans which further reduces noise.

You seems to live in the 90s or early 00s, sorry. Consumer fan technology has come a long way since those days. Case sound dampening has also come a long way, so the little noise that fans do make, it gets pretty well dampened inside the case.

> With a PC you still have case fans running because even with modern motherboards they don't support switching them off at low temperature

What do you mean? Most motherboards support sending 0W to fans at given temps. You just install the motherboard software.

The motherboard software that is Windows only.

Or bios, or whatever has, although non-Windows support is generally bad in hardware because it requires open sourcing drivers.

I am not familiar with any motherboard that does not expose all its capabilities through BIOS or UEFI. Yes, it might be less convenient to have to reboot to set a fan curve, but it’s certainly possible. And the Windows software is so terrible anyway, going through BIOS is always my first choice.

> even with modern motherboards they don't support switching them off at low temperature

I have a ASUS TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS WIFI II motherboard in my desktop set to do exactly that, under I think 48 °C it stops the case fans. No Windows software required, it’s all in the MB’s BIOS.

The Mac Studio in particular is a terrible example to use here. At least the first iteration of it. It has a fan that is constantly spinning, and it’s a cheap fan, so it creates a very annoying whine sound at low RPMs:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/09/mysterious-noise-sparks...

Hopefully, Apple has solved this issue with the second iteration.

How many hours of research and people on forums yelling at you do you have to go through before you do that?

I built a fairly stock PC, it is not silent and needs BIOS undervolting and custom fan curves to get there, and most recently I found updating the BIOS erases all of that.

Also built a NAS (which is too loud so I'd like to rebuild it) and the one time I reported a bug to FreeNAS a graybeard yelled at me on Bugzilla for not building a 1U server with fans that sound like an airplane taking off.

Really should be no yelling! If the place you are visiting has assholes yelling, just leave for another. But like any major purchase, it takes research. I do this research every 4-5 years or so, when I will be undergoing a desktop replacement. I’d choose the CPU and GPU first, then investigate cooling solutions. Liquid cooling is not always optimal with regard to noise, so another decision to make before committing on a solution is if you’ll be overclocking or not, as there are air-based cooling solutions that could be silent, and give you all the TDP cooling your CPU needs. After you’ve chosen your cooler (liquid or air-based), investigate low-noise, high-airflow fans at the size your cooler accepts. Going the largest fans is not always the best choice for optimal airflow or noise, so factor that in the investigation. I have less experience with custom GPU coolers, as I’ve only used stock coolers—those are pretty silent and well optimized these days.