  We study the equilibration dynamics of closed finite quantum systems and
address the question of the time needed for the system to equilibrate. In
particular we focus on the scaling of the equilibration time T_{\mathrm{eq}}
with the system size L . For clean systems we give general arguments predicting
T_{\mathrm{eq}}=O(L^{0}) for clustering initial states, while for small
quenches around a critical point we find T_{\mathrm{eq}}=O(L^{\zeta}) where
\zeta is the dynamical critical exponent. We then analyze noisy systems where
exponentially large time scales are known to exist. Specifically we consider
the tight-binding model with diagonal impurities and give numerical evidence
that in this case T_{\mathrm{eq}}\sim Be^{CL^{\psi}} where B,C, \psi are
observable dependent constants. Finally, we consider another noisy system whose
evolution dynamics is randomly sampled from a circular unitary ensemble. Here,
we are able to prove analytically that T_{\mathrm{eq}}=O(1), thus showing that
noise alone is not sufficient for slow equilibration dynamics.
