MSO5000 Bode Plot Capability: Is it Good Enough? [Many tips about a 1st scope]

[balnazzar]

I never owned the SDS1104X-E, but I got chance to play with it - from my point of view it's the best what you can get in $500 range,
without mentoring easy upgrade to 1204X-E.
I'm guessing you did receive an defective, or returned unit (missing screen protection?) ...
You should contact the vendor (Amazon?) and request replacement.

Yep, one reason I bought on Amazon are the super easy returns.. Although I still have to clarify if Siglent ships its scopes with a protective film or if such an acoustic noise is kind of normal... Mine could actually be a defective unit that someone else actually returned for the same reasons..

[Fungus]

But this tells us that Digilent probably applies the edu discount worldwide.. Mh... I'll send them an e-mail. Thanks.

I got mine with edu discount in Spain.

You have to contact the the country's official dealer and convince them you're eligible.

[Fungus]

Perhaps there is someone selling aftermarket casings to hold both boards together. Or make something out of wood or metal that does the same.

I have a laser cutter so I thought of mounting mine on a wooden base. The AD2 doesn't have any screw holes though so it would have to be zip tied down or something.

A 3D printed holder would probably be best but I never got around to it.

[tautech]

I never owned the SDS1104X-E, but I got chance to play with it - from my point of view it's the best what you can get in $500 range,
without mentoring easy upgrade to 1204X-E.
I'm guessing you did receive an defective, or returned unit (missing screen protection?) ...
You should contact the vendor (Amazon?) and request replacement.

Yep, one reason I bought on Amazon are the super easy returns.. Although I still have to clarify if Siglent ships its scopes with a protective film or if such an acoustic noise is kind of normal... Mine could actually be a defective unit that someone else actually returned for the same reasons..

More important than quality local support ?
Yeah right. 

Only Siglent touch screen devices now come with screen protectors.

[Fungus]

Only Siglent touch screen devices now come with screen protectors.

... and the loud noise?

[tautech]

Only Siglent touch screen devices now come with screen protectors.

... and the loud noise?

Is only relevant to the users susceptibility to instrument fan noise.

[Fungus]

Only Siglent touch screen devices now come with screen protectors.

... and the loud noise?

Is only relevant to the users susceptibility to instrument fan noise.

But does it sound normal to you?

[2N3055]

Only Siglent touch screen devices now come with screen protectors.

... and the loud noise?

Is only relevant to the users susceptibility to instrument fan noise.

But does it sound normal to you?

What do you think?  How would we know without  any reference or any real acoustic level measurement.  These phones have ALC microphones, that will pickup whisper 10 m away..

[balnazzar]

You have to contact the the country's official dealer and convince them you're eligible.

Uh, I'll try...

[balnazzar]

Only Siglent touch screen devices now come with screen protectors.

... and the loud noise?

Is only relevant to the users susceptibility to instrument fan noise.

But does it sound normal to you?

What do you think?  How would we know without  any reference or any real acoustic level measurement.  These phones have ALC microphones, that will pickup whisper 10 m away..

True. It's hard to judge the sound pressure on a video, but I don't have, well.. A sound pressure meter. Nonetheless, you have an idea of the pitch.
I may be sensitive to acoustical noise, but it's more or less on par with the wireless portable vacuum cleaner I use to clean my car.
More specifically, it's louder than the Nvidia A6000 GPU inside my PC, which is a 300W design in a much smaller package, while the scope is a 50W device with much more room to vent.
Such levels of acoustical noise are not justifiable, in my opinion. The scope is louder than the SDS5000, no matter the fact that being a 500 MHz scope, I imagine the latter having a more power-hungry hardware.

The 1104X-E has a *small* fan (hence the pitch), probably not of 1st rate quality, and it's not PWM-driven. It goes all the time to maximum rpms.

And, if Siglent doesn't ship with screen protectors, that's bad practice too. Not acceptable to get a scope with its screen smeared before 1st use. Even the nafarious Hantek had a protective film.

[balnazzar]

I never owned the SDS1104X-E, but I got chance to play with it - from my point of view it's the best what you can get in $500 range,
without mentoring easy upgrade to 1204X-E.
I'm guessing you did receive an defective, or returned unit (missing screen protection?) ...
You should contact the vendor (Amazon?) and request replacement.

Yep, one reason I bought on Amazon are the super easy returns.. Although I still have to clarify if Siglent ships its scopes with a protective film or if such an acoustic noise is kind of normal... Mine could actually be a defective unit that someone else actually returned for the same reasons..

More important than quality local support ?
Yeah right. 

The thing is that I cannot know the quality of the local support. It could be the worst support one can imagine. That's one reason.
The other is that buying from the distributor I would have had to ship the product back under my responsibility (if the courier breaks it, you have to initiate a lawsuit against it, or a long bureaucratic procedure even if it's insured). With Amazon, once you give the product back to the courier, you have no resposibility. That's the second reason.
Third, you have to pay the expenses for shipping it back. Possibly insured for >500eur, it's expensive. With Amazon, no expenses at all.
Fourth, if that 'quality local distributor' is nasty, it can appeal to a thousand reasons for delaying the refund. Or not refunding at all on grounds that you did not package the product well. You are back to a lawsuit against them. Amazon refunds you even if you put a brick into the box (ok, hyperbole, but you get it).

So, yes. It's more important that an allegedly 'quality' local support.

[baldurn]

I do not remember the noise to be that bad. But that may also be because I have used the instrument in an environment where there will be other sounds at all times.

I do think many instruments are louder than they need to be. It is apparently not something manufactures want to spent the last cent on improving. So I suggest you would be best served by expecting that a fan change would be needed in many cases.

As to the warranty, I think EU laws specify they would need to honor that unless they can show that your modification is the reason for the failure. For example they could claim your new fan provided insufficient cooling. But only if the failure was something that could be caused by insufficient cooling. I would not worry too much in this case because it is a relatively inexpensive device.

[balnazzar]

I do think many instruments are louder than they need to be. It is apparently not something manufactures want to spent the last cent on improving. So I suggest you would be best served by expecting that a fan change would be needed in many cases.

It depends upon the manufacturer: https://youtu.be/b-TuDm92cn4?t=203

And about the MSO5000: https://youtu.be/P5faiEUXbGg?t=1412

Bottom line: chinese scopes tend to be noisy (and in the case of the MSO5K, not only acoustically...). That's what I don't like about chinese products in general. They tend to deliver stuff that works, but they are always kind of half-finished. How much more would cost to be a bit more attentive to the acoustical noise? Almost nothing. A better fan, PWM control, maybe make the scope 1 cm thicker and put a 120mm fan on the back, exhausting from the side vents..

As to the warranty, I think EU laws specify they would need to honor that unless they can show that your modification is the reason for the failure. For example they could claim your new fan provided insufficient cooling. But only if the failure was something that could be caused by insufficient cooling. I would not worry too much in this case because it is a relatively inexpensive device.

Mh, as a matter of fact, it's such a fuzzy point that they could claim one has damaged it by just opening the case, and then say "sue us, pal". Anyway, it's true that even considering my shallow pockets, losing 500e won't change my life. It's that one buys a scope and has to start doing modifications in the inside from the first day that annoys me.

[balnazzar]

Perhaps there is someone selling aftermarket casings to hold both boards together. Or make something out of wood or metal that does the same.

I have a laser cutter so I thought of mounting mine on a wooden base. The AD2 doesn't have any screw holes though so it would have to be zip tied down or something.

A 3D printed holder would probably be best but I never got around to it.

Mh, I was reflecting upon that.
It should be something that has very tight tolerances, length and width wise. Then, you have a top and a bottom part of the "case", and they screw upon each other. If the upper one can extert a slight amount of pressure upon both the AD2 and the BNC adapter, it will be OK. Again, it's a matter of tolerances.

A plastic case would be ideal. As you have mentioned, one should use a 3D printer.
There are numerous 3D printing services on the Internet, but the problem is that's difficult to draw a sufficiently accurate schematics for them to work with...

[baldurn]

Mh, as a matter of fact, it's such a fuzzy point that they could claim one has damaged it by just opening the case, and then say "sue us, pal". Anyway, it's true that even considering my shallow pockets, losing 500e won't change my life. It's that one buys a scope and has to start doing modifications in the inside from the first day that annoys me.

The "sue us" is what makes them give in. Because these days there are small claims courts where you can bring the case with very little cost to you. They on the other hand would need to hire an attorney to go to your country and even if they win, you will not be paying that. So they lose no matter what. It is usually not worth it for cheap devices unless they want to make a point.

The real danger of bad customer support is when they take in the device and then keep it for months before returning it still broken.

Does anyone have experience with Siglent.eu in this regard? I have bought a few things from them but never had to return anything.

[tautech]

Does anyone have experience with Siglent.eu in this regard? I have bought a few things from them but never had to return anything.

FYI, that is NOT the Siglent EU regional office:
European Sales Offices
SIGLENT Technologies Germany GmbH
Add: Staetzlinger Str.  70
86165 Augsburg, Germany
Tel: +49(0)-821-666 0 111 0
Fax: +49(0)-821-666 0 111 22
info-eu@siglent.com
www.siglenteu.com

[tautech]

Such levels of acoustical noise are not justifiable, in my opinion. The scope is louder than the SDS5000, no matter the fact that being a 500 MHz scope, I imagine the latter having a more power-hungry hardware.

You need give this more thought.
Smaller device = more compact design, harder to cool with insufficient real-estate available for a larger, slower running quieter fan.

The 1104X-E has a *small* fan (hence the pitch), probably not of 1st rate quality, and it's not PWM-driven. It goes all the time to maximum rpms.

The fan is quite good quality actually as Noctua replacements have been tried however pushing the same air and pressure they are no quieter. There is a thread you can find where noise reduction options are discussed.

And, if Siglent doesn't ship with screen protectors, that's bad practice too. Not acceptable to get a scope with its screen smeared before 1st use. Even the nafarious Hantek had a protective film.

You think.
Good luck damaging the matt toughened glass lens on a Siglent scope and in some effort to reduce plastic waste the screen protection overlay was dispensed with for most models a couple years back.
All instruments come in a perforated plastic bag with a desiccant pouch so apart from anyone but the end customer getting fingerprints or grub on the display it's obviously been mishandled. Does it still have the warranty seal intact ?
Now many boots are recorded in Sys Info ?
Is firmware the latest ?

[2N3055]

Bottom line: chinese scopes tend to be noisy (and in the case of the MSO5K, not only acoustically...). That's what I don't like about chinese products in general. They tend to deliver stuff that works, but they are always kind of half-finished. How much more would cost to be a bit more attentive to the acoustical noise? Almost nothing. A better fan, PWM control, maybe make the scope 1 cm thicker and put a 120mm fan on the back, exhausting from the side vents..

It has nothing to do with "Chinese" or "French". It is about inexpensive devices.

No matter that it is still significant investment to you and many billions of people, these are very inexpensive devices for what they are and when scopes are concerned.
They are also incredibly powerful compared  to just 10-15 years ago to devices costing 10x that much.

To achieve that, they have to be cost optimized
And you seem to not really understand "how much it cost" to do anything when designing and manufacturing a product..
To people with no practical experience doing that job it all seems easy. It's not, and it is most complicated at low end.
I've seen people buying inexpensive scopes for 350 € (because it was as much as they can afford)  and then putting in a 65€ fans, complaining that such fan should have been inside in a first place..... Because how much would it cost in a first place... Well, 65€, that much...  But they wouldn't buy that scope at 415€ because it would be too expensive...

New SDS2000X HD is probably acoustically quietest device I ever used. It has best quality materials it makes R&S scopes look like plastic toys. It feels solid, and premium quality when used.
When released, first comment on EEVBLOG was that it was expensive... But it is not, it priced according to it quality and performance class...

This topic of acoustic noise comes up every now and then. Some people have very quiet environments and have acoustic sensitivities. That happens. Most of the people don't care, or have background noise that makes it non issue.
But be sure that no scope with a fan will be completely quiet (except mentioned SDS2000X HD and some R&S scopes from lower end). Worst are more expensive, more powerful models that have lots of heat to dissipate...

[balnazzar]

You need give this more thought.
Smaller device = more compact design, harder to cool with insufficient real-estate available for a larger, slower running quieter fan.

I actually thought about it. I may be the worst rookie about electronics and test equipment, but I have some experience in building silent air-cooled computers.
That's why I said they could have put a 120mm fan on the back of it by just making the scope a tad thicker. I also said that the A6000 gpu, no matter being a 300W monster in a much smaller package (w.r.t. this scope) manages to be more silent.
Finally, the absence of some control mechanism (pwm?) with fan rpms as function of the scope temperature is hardly justifiable.

The fan is quite good quality actually as Noctua replacements have been tried however pushing the same air and pressure they are no quieter. There is a thread you can find where noise reduction options are discussed.

That's very bad news. If I wasn't sufficiently scared into returning it, now I am.
If I cannot silence it, I cannot keep it, even if it was the best scope in the world as for the instrument itself. It just drives me crazy.
Maybe I can go on for a while with the AD2, save money, and then buy the goddamn RTB2000 within a year or so...

All instruments come in a perforated plastic bag with a desiccant pouch so apart from anyone but the end customer getting fingerprints or grub on the display it's obviously been mishandled. Does it still have the warranty seal intact ?
Now many boots are recorded in Sys Info ?
Is firmware the latest ?

The bag was just closed with adhesive tape. But the scope shows just 3 boots (mine).. Can that counter be zeroed by a competent technician?

Software version: 6.1.37R8
OS version: 8.3
Hardware version: 01-05

Thanks.

[balnazzar]

And you seem to not really understand "how much it cost" to do anything when designing and manufacturing a product..
To people with no practical experience doing that job it all seems easy. It's not, and it is most complicated at low end.
I've seen people buying inexpensive scopes for 350 € (because it was as much as they can afford)  and then putting in a 65€ fans, complaining that such fan should have been inside in a first place..... Because how much would it cost in a first place... Well, 65€, that much...  But they wouldn't buy that scope at 415€ because it would be too expensive...

This topic of acoustic noise comes up every now and then. Some people have very quiet environments and have acoustic sensitivities. That happens. Most of the people don't care, or have background noise that makes it non issue.
But be sure that no scope with a fan will be completely quiet (except mentioned SDS2000X HD and some R&S scopes from lower end). Worst are more expensive, more powerful models that have lots of heat to dissipate...

As I said above, I try and build my computers with silence in mind, and that's not only because I don't like noise, but also because I do audio stuff with them.
Before that, I tried numerous desktop PCs and even some professional workstations. They were all considerably loud.
With *less* money than it's required to buy a 2nd rate brand desktop PC, I managed to build a totally silent (idle) or quiet (under stress) workstation. It was sufficient to buy the right fans (which cost not much more than crappy ones, and certainly not 65 eur apiece), being careful about the airflow, selecting the correct power supply, etc... I neither made strange, exotic things, nor I had to resort to liquid cooling.
In the hindsight, all these pre-built workstations would have required very modest investments in order to be quiet. It's not that they leave them loud because otherwise they wouldn't be competitively priced. It's just that either they don't care, or they hire incompetent engineers. Probably both.

The SDS2000X Plus is much more noisier than the comparably-sized RTB2000 (that can be barely heard according to the reviewer) and even noisier than the little keysight (which has less room for airflow and fan size, as tautech noted..), indicates just bad engineering. If they managed to spare some 50 bucks by leaving it so loud, that was a bad call, period. That scope starts at 1400 eur vat included, and people who buy it wouldn't have been discouraged by a 50 bucks difference if they released a quieter revision. The same stands for the Rigol MSO5000.

New SDS2000X HD is probably acoustically quietest device I ever used. It has best quality materials it makes R&S scopes look like plastic toys. It feels solid, and premium quality when used.
When released, first comment on EEVBLOG was that it was expensive... But it is not, it priced according to it quality and performance class...

You seem intentioned to defend the brand with your life, more than tautech who sells it..
As I said (and you folks duly observed) I know nothing about test equipment, so I'll leave to others that thing about the R&S stuff being plastic toys.
Let me just say that I didn't ask for a device that belittles top-brand scopes into plastic toys. I would have been content with exactly the same scope as the actual 1104x-e, but with a reasonable acoustical performance.
That they can make silent stuff when they want, well, that just makes things worse for the brand.

This topic of acoustic noise comes up every now and then. Some people have very quiet environments and have acoustic sensitivities. That happens. Most of the people don't care, or have background noise that makes it non issue.
But be sure that no scope with a fan will be completely quiet (except mentioned SDS2000X HD and some R&S scopes from lower end). Worst are more expensive, more powerful models that have lots of heat to dissipate...

It's not that I have such incredible sensitivity to noise. It's that this scopes outputs a sound pressure that's comparable to a portable vacuum cleaner. If you want, tomorrow I'll take the car VC at home and make a video with the same iPad at the same distances.
It's just not acceptable.
Now that you made me think about cars, let me tell you something.
One crucial aspect about cars, especially for those who do considerable mileages is how comfortable the driver's seat is.
Now, among utility cars (say up to 30K eur) very few do have seat inclination adjustments, or lumbar support adjustments (seat inclination refers to the part of the seat upon which you place your arse).
How much, in percentage terms, are these adjustments going to impact over 30K? Nothing, or almost.
Still, they don't put them into utility cars.

Manufacturer stupidity.

A friend of mine works as traveling salesman. It has back pain and suffers from his high yearly mileage. My car has an AGR certified driver's seat and you can adjust whatever you want with it (I paid just 450 more bucks for it when I bought the car), and he observed that it's much more comfortable to drive. I asked why didn't he buy such an option. He replied he didn't even think about such trifles.

Customer stupidity.

People "don't care", and manufacturers (particularly the bad ones), consequently care even less.
Then the same people try a quality product, maybe just slightly more expensive, and then say "oohh, it's another world!".

[Fungus]

I asked why didn't he buy such an option. He replied he didn't even think about such trifles.

Probably why oscilloscopes are noisy - 99% of customers never even question it or just accept it as "necessary".

I swapped the fan in my old Rigol. A $7 fan made a huge difference.

The airflow was probably a tiny bit less but the 'scope's rated to 50 degrees ambient temperature so I wasn't worried. My only regret was not doing it much sooner.

If your Siglent survives the first few weeks without dying then go for it.

[2N3055]

And you seem to not really understand "how much it cost" to do anything when designing and manufacturing a product..
To people with no practical experience doing that job it all seems easy. It's not, and it is most complicated at low end.
I've seen people buying inexpensive scopes for 350 € (because it was as much as they can afford)  and then putting in a 65€ fans, complaining that such fan should have been inside in a first place..... Because how much would it cost in a first place... Well, 65€, that much...  But they wouldn't buy that scope at 415€ because it would be too expensive...

This topic of acoustic noise comes up every now and then. Some people have very quiet environments and have acoustic sensitivities. That happens. Most of the people don't care, or have background noise that makes it non issue.
But be sure that no scope with a fan will be completely quiet (except mentioned SDS2000X HD and some R&S scopes from lower end). Worst are more expensive, more powerful models that have lots of heat to dissipate...

As I said above, I try and build my computers with silence in mind, and that's not only because I don't like noise, but also because I do audio stuff with them.
Before that, I tried numerous desktop PCs and even some professional workstations. They were all considerably loud.
With *less* money than it's required to buy a 2nd rate brand desktop PC, I managed to build a totally silent (idle) or quiet (under stress) workstation. It was sufficient to buy the right fans (which cost not much more than crappy ones, and certainly not 65 eur apiece), being careful about the airflow, selecting the correct power supply, etc... I neither made strange, exotic things, nor I had to resort to liquid cooling.
In the hindsight, all these pre-built workstations would have required very modest investments in order to be quiet. It's not that they leave them loud because otherwise they wouldn't be competitively priced. It's just that either they don't care, or they hire incompetent engineers. Probably both.

The SDS2000X Plus is much more noisier than the comparably-sized RTB2000 (that can be barely heard according to the reviewer) and even noisier than the little keysight (which has less room for airflow and fan size, as tautech noted..), indicates just bad engineering. If they managed to spare some 50 bucks by leaving it so loud, that was a bad call, period. That scope starts at 1400 eur vat included, and people who buy it wouldn't have been discouraged by a 50 bucks difference if they released a quieter revision. The same stands for the Rigol MSO5000.

New SDS2000X HD is probably acoustically quietest device I ever used. It has best quality materials it makes R&S scopes look like plastic toys. It feels solid, and premium quality when used.
When released, first comment on EEVBLOG was that it was expensive... But it is not, it priced according to it quality and performance class...

You seem intentioned to defend the brand with your life, more than tautech who sells it..
As I said (and you folks duly observed) I know nothing about test equipment, so I'll leave to others that thing about the R&S stuff being plastic toys.
Let me just say that I didn't ask for a device that belittles top-brand scopes into plastic toys. I would have been content with exactly the same scope as the actual 1104x-e, but with a reasonable acoustical performance.
That they can make silent stuff when they want, well, that just makes things worse for the brand.

This topic of acoustic noise comes up every now and then. Some people have very quiet environments and have acoustic sensitivities. That happens. Most of the people don't care, or have background noise that makes it non issue.
But be sure that no scope with a fan will be completely quiet (except mentioned SDS2000X HD and some R&S scopes from lower end). Worst are more expensive, more powerful models that have lots of heat to dissipate...

It's not that I have such incredible sensitivity to noise. It's that this scopes outputs a sound pressure that's comparable to a portable vacuum cleaner. If you want, tomorrow I'll take the car VC at home and make a video with the same iPad at the same distances.
It's just not acceptable.
Now that you made me think about cars, let me tell you something.
One crucial aspect about cars, especially for those who do considerable mileages is how comfortable the driver's seat is.
Now, among utility cars (say up to 30K eur) very few do have seat inclination adjustments, or lumbar support adjustments (seat inclination refers to the part of the seat upon which you place your arse).
How much, in percentage terms, are these adjustments going to impact over 30K? Nothing, or almost.
Still, they don't put them into utility cars.

Manufacturer stupidity.

A friend of mine works as traveling salesman. It has back pain and suffers from his high yearly mileage. My car has an AGR certified driver's seat and you can adjust whatever you want with it (I paid just 450 more bucks for it when I bought the car), and he observed that it's much more comfortable to drive. I asked why didn't he buy such an option. He replied he didn't even think about such trifles.

Customer stupidity.

People "don't care", and manufacturers (particularly the bad ones), consequently care even less.
Then the same people try a quality product, maybe just slightly more expensive, and then say "oohh, it's another world!".

At moments you sound like a spoiled child...
And drama queen.. "defending brand with my life..." LOL..
Pardon my being direct.

Listen. It is simple. You obviously didn't ever try RTB2000, SDS2000X HD or any of other scopes you mention. I did. In fact, have some of them.
SDS2000X HD is really quietest scope with fan I ever heard. Even little quieter than RTB2000 that is really quiet and excellent in that regard.
And SDS2000X HD makes RTB2000 look cheap.. It is so high quality in look and feel. That is just a fact, but you wouldn't know but your prejudices allow you to say I'm lying and am a fanboy...

My post about inexpensive scope applies equally to Rigol DS1104Z and MSO5000 or Siglent SDS1104X-E, or even SDS2000X+. These are very cost optimized products in scope world. 

And you do have sound sensitivity... You work with audio, you say, that explains it. You might have very quiet environment and hypersensitivity to sound pollution. Which is fine by me.
But.. Did you just call me or any other customer of these scopes stupid because we are not bothered by little noise? I also tell you from experience that most people have more than one device with fan in it and not so quiet environment and they don't even notice these sounds anymore..

And your point about manufacturer stupidity and customer stupidity is just your hubris that you know better than anybody and that everything is simple. And you are wrong.
RTB2000 is not "just a slightly more expensive" than SDS1104X-E.
Most customers are price conscious and manufacturers mass produce products for majority. . Simple as that.
So no fancy seats are being installed because most of the people don't need them.
And no scope manufacturers are optimizing all they products for work in acoustically quiet environments because it is minority of users for price hike for everybody.. I personally like they didn't made me pay for you to have quiet fan, to put it bluntly...

[balnazzar]

I swapped the fan in my old Rigol. A $7 fan made a huge difference.

As I suspected.. This confirms my conjecture about the manufacturer not bothering about quality just to scrape a few dollars more.

[jasonRF]

Bottom line: chinese scopes tend to be noisy (and in the case of the MSO5K, not only acoustically...). That's what I don't like about chinese products in general. They tend to deliver stuff that works, but they are always kind of half-finished. How much more would cost to be a bit more attentive to the acoustical noise? Almost nothing. A better fan, PWM control, maybe make the scope 1 cm thicker and put a 120mm fan on the back, exhausting from the side vents..

At work my office door opens into an electronics lab packed with high-end gear made by non-Chinese companies (Tek, Agilent, R&S, Anritsu, Keysight, etc.) and it is loud enough that I need to keep my door shut in order to hear myself think.  While I know I am extra sensitive to the noise, it leads me to suspect that the nationality of the company may not have a lot to do with this.

It is not easy to find silent (or nearly-silent) test equipment.  When I was shopping for a scope this year I found that there were few options that were 'guaranteed' to be quiet-enough for me - at least without hearing them in-person.  Compared to the great bang-per-buck units like the sds1104x-e, I found the options were either much more expensive (the R&S already discussed), or had fewer features (eg the fanless Owon sds1000-series which also have inferior performance), or both (eg the fanless Tek 1000C series).   

The main fanless options I found that had deep memory and lots of features were the nicer Picoscopes, but they are not cheap and most people strongly prefer benchtop equipment.   The most 'affordable' deep-memory 4-channel option is the 2406B at $700 US (50 MHz, 1 GS/s, 32 MSample memory, 1 MHz AWG w/ Bode plots) but has been out of stock and backordered everywhere for months as far as I can tell; the least-expensive 4-channel deep-memory models actually in-stock in stores cost about $1000 US (2407B, 3403D).   
Edit: forgot to add that these 2000B/3000D series only have 4mV/div sensitivity, which is not so good. 

jason

[baldurn]

When I turn on all my instruments it is significant louder than any computer I ever owned but not like a vacuum cleaner or a server. One instrument seems to be more loud than the rest combined, but it is not my scope :-). It is my Siglent SDM3055 multimeter. My Siglent SDG6022X AWG has the exact same form factor but is completely silent. One would think the AWG had a larger need for cooling than a multimeter, given that most multimeters do not even have a fan. There simply is no rythm to this.

But unlike my computer, I very rarely run all my instruments for hours on end. I can tolerate significant more noise from instruments than a computer. I got myself an Macbook Air because it has no fans and therefore is completely silent. I just don't think you should try to set the same standard for your instruments as the computer for multiple reasons.

First is that there simply are no options in our price range. Anyone can order a silent computer or build one. Not so with instruments. You can perhaps improve something by modifying fans but you will still not get into "completely or almost silent" range. There are no silent chain saws either ;-)

The second is that the way one uses instruments usually is different from the way you use your computer. I realize that there are probably professionals that use this stuff all day long like I do when at work with my computer. But for most at the hobby level you will not be taking measurements 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Third, you may have to choose between loudness and features if you are on a budget. Maybe you get lucky and get both, but if not, do you really have the luxury of missing out on needed features and get a worse instrument but with a better fan?