Which games console is the loudest of all time? Gamers discuss


An image of a PS4 being very loud.

Regardless of whether your preference is Playstation, Xbox or Nintendo, sometimes you can end up with a console that develops a few quirks either straight out of the box or as it ages.

A lot of these little nuances are so minor that you might not even notice them, or they might be easily remedied, but one issue can be a little more problematic if you’re particularly enamoured with the soundtracks of your chosen games.

This problem is the amount of noise the console itself generates just running whatever you’ve fed into it or downloaded. It's the subject of a recent discussion among gamers curious to try and find out what the single loudest console of all time is.

Have you ever owned a console that forced you to invest in ear plugs?

Posting to begin the ResetEra thread on this topic, user ScOULaris picked out the Sega Dreamcast, PS3 and PS4 Pro, the latter of which they claim “necessitated me wearing headphones in order to even hear any game I was playing” as their top three and asked other gamers which are the loudest consoles they’ve experienced in-person.

Many of their fellow FPS fans replied to agreed that the PS4 or PS4 Pro would be deserving of the top spot, with user Emerald saying: “My base PS4 playing God of War definitely made me feel like I was in a plane waiting to take off” and GrandeDp similarly suggesting: “PS4 pro for sure. Sounded like a jet engine near the end of its life when I had it.”

Some picked out other hardware-intensive games that would send their PS4s into this state, with user Einbroch nominating: “opening the map in Horizon: Zero Dawn” and JigglesBunny musing: “The sound of the PS4 Pro’s fans going into turbo mode when sitting in the menu of (Call of Duty) Modern Warfare: Remastered is permanently seared into my brain.”

While the PS4 clearly took the top prize, some other consoles did receive votes, with many users posting memes about the Dreamcast’s infamous disc reading noises and Glassboy lamenting: “I bought one years later after its release on eBay and thought I was ripped off because of how loud it was. Nope, turns out the laser reading the discs is really loud.”

On the Xbox side of things, the 360 received the most mentions, with user Tokyo_Funk comparing its noise to a “small whirring motor somewhere in my room” and SJPN saying theirs: “had both noisy fans and a disc drive that sounded like a power tool”, though both stressed that these sounds paled in comparison to the PS4.

Meanwhile, things in the world of Nintendo seem very quiet, though user GamerJM did say: “A Wii with a minor disc laser problem is still the only one that was notably loud for me.”

Regardless of whether you’ve ever been unable to hear dialogue due to some particularly deafening hardware, make sure to follow us for in-depth coverage of games on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

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