We contribute to the more detailed understanding of the phase-field crystal model recently developed by Elder et al (2002 Phys. Rev. Lett. 88 245701), by focusing on its noise term and examining its impact on the nucleation rate in a homogeneously solidifying system as well as on successively developing grain size distributions. In this context we show that principally the grain size decreases with increasing noise amplitude, resulting in both a smaller average grain size and a decreased maximum grain size. Despite this general tendency, which we interpret based on Panfilis and Filiponi (2000 J. Appl. Phys. 88 562), we can identify two different regimes in which nucleation and successive initial growth are governed by quite different mechanisms.