How loud should the fan be?

The fan on my III is so quiet I was not sure there was a fan in it until I stuck my to the grille on the side of the case. Once racked, I can't hear the thing at all.
 
I haven't done anything to mine yet except take the top lid off and look at it. Interestingly, when unscrewing some of the lid screws, the fan noise went down substantially, and with the lid just sitting on the top, its quieter than if you put your palm on the lid. There is certainly some degree of lid vibration at play.

Looking at how the fan is mounted to the aluminum plate, I see no rubber spacers or anything. The fan looks like its mounted right against the metal. and a nut and bolt goes through each corner of the fan, which again appears to be metal on plastic, no spacers or isolation sleeve etc. I'm curious as to why they couldn't use the normal computer fan style mounting where you've got the silicon posts with a lip on them. You just pull them through the opening and the lip pokes out the other side, holding it in place against that aluminum riser platform, yet keeping the fans vibrations dampened from the underlying structure... The way its currently attached the fan and the aluminum plate are one solid piece, no dampening at all.

If I pinch the side of the aluminum plate between my fingers the vibration is cut way down. I don't know if maybe they forgot to add a little gasket material that was supposed to go under the fan, or if they just tightened it too much, but it seems to be the cause of the noise and its making different parts of the case vibrate.
 
lqdsnddist said:
I haven't done anything to mine yet except take the top lid off and look at it. Interestingly, when unscrewing some of the lid screws, the fan noise went down substantially, and with the lid just sitting on the top, its quieter than if you put your palm on the lid. There is certainly some degree of lid vibration at play.

Looking at how the fan is mounted to the aluminum plate, I see no rubber spacers or anything. The fan looks like its mounted right against the metal. and a nut and bolt goes through each corner of the fan, which again appears to be metal on plastic, no spacers or isolation sleeve etc. I'm curious as to why they couldn't use the normal computer fan style mounting where you've got the silicon posts with a lip on them. You just pull them through the opening and the lip pokes out the other side, holding it in place against that aluminum riser platform, yet keeping the fans vibrations dampened from the underlying structure... The way its currently attached the fan and the aluminum plate are one solid piece, no dampening at all.

If I pinch the side of the aluminum plate between my fingers the vibration is cut way down. I don't know if maybe they forgot to add a little gasket material that was supposed to go under the fan, or if they just tightened it too much, but it seems to be the cause of the noise and its making different parts of the case vibrate.
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Mine looked like that too, but there really are grommets there--the locknuts were very tight and had fully compressed the grommets, making them hard to see. Unfortunately, loosening them didn't really solve my problem. I haven't figured out if removing the cover really makes it better, or if the wind noise when I do that hides the drone noise.

Danny W.
 
Also I’m guessing your unit is quiet so your probably not bothered by fan noise and as such probably have little interest in the matter....
 
Didn't want to make a whole thread on another manufacturing thing, so would appreciate if others responded here. Does anyone else notice how loose the buttons are? Mine has what feels like a lot of play, I can rattle it around... I don't remember it being like this with the Axe-Fx II XL+ I had.

If I'm making a deal out of nothing, let me know! Heh. But thought it worth checking if others also have this or if it's also a unit to unit thing like the fan situation.
 
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yeky83 said:
Didn't want to make a whole thread on another manufacturing thing, so would appreciate if others responded here. Does anyone else notice how loose the buttons are? Mine has what feels like a lot of play, I can rattle it around... I don't remember it being like this with the Axe-Fx II XL+ I had.

If I'm making a deal out of nothing, let me know! Heh. But thought it worth checking if others also have this or if it's also a unit to unit thing like the fan situation.
Click to expand...
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/better-buttons.137415/
 
Using professional fans in a professional product would make things way easier and when the device costs already 2800€ not a single person would be upset being charged 10 bucks more for a proper fan. You don't need any factory environment or silent room because quality control is already done by the fan manufacturer and they guaranty you the noise level that is on the spec sheet.

So 10 bucks more for a proper fan, not opening the unit myself, not buying and waiting for the fan to arrive, taking the time to replace the old one and then finally being happy. I would prefer to spend a little more instead of spending my time and especially the feeling you have when a pro piece of gear is at first sight disappointing.

I had the same thing with a Mesa Mark 5/25. After swapping the fan I couldn't hear anything from the amp but before it was barely usable in my studio because it drove me crazy while having recording breaks.
But for sure the Axe Fans are not that crazy loud like my Boogie.

I have the Axe 1, Axe 1 Ultra, Axe 2 and Axe 2 XL and all beside one had fan problems or were annoyingly loud. 3 Times the stock fan broke.
I invested quite a LOT of money in Fractal products so I don't really get it why a otherwise PERFECT product has it's Achilles Heel on a cent article, especially such an easy to fix one.
And when I take a look at G66 that they uninstalled all stock fans and put in high-end fans that cost you 10-15€ on amazon just for free to make the customer happy... So Europe got the fan problem solved by the distributor. In this case we can assume that the problem was pretty big otherwise the distributor for nearly a whole continent wouldn't start to swap fans just for fun and for free.
 
sprint said:
Me neither! -given there were noisy fan discussions 4 gens ago.

Anyway - won't stop me from purchasing this powerful beast.
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When its stated that the new unit is supposed to have a quieter fan than the previous units, and then it turns out to actually be as loud, if not louder, while other folks post about how thrilled they are with the totally inaudible fan on their unit it warrants discussion to figure out what is going on, does it not ?

If everyone was talking about how great the color screen on the unit was and your was showing black and white, wouldn't you want to know whats up ? Bit of a stretch as far as an analogy goes but the point remains. Everything is always deemed to be trivial until it actually happens to someone.


Given you state you will be "purchasing", and not "have purchased", I take it that you don't have a III sitting in front of you, correct ? So how can you weight in on how loud, or not loud, the fan is on something you don't own ??

Once you get yours, and you power it up and think "gee, this thing is actually louder than my previous unit" are you not going to care, or even wonder if that is how it should be working ? Are you just going to go "oh well, people have been having fan "issues" for 4 generations, such is life" ??

If fan discussions bother you, then why click on the thread ??
 
It appears that some units may have the fan mounting too tight. The fans are mounted on rubber bushings but if the screws are too tight this defeats the whole purpose of the rubber mounts.

We've instituted a production check to make sure the screws are the correct tightness. Anyone experiencing excessive fan noise can contact support for an RMA to have the fan screws adjusted.
 
FractalAudio said:
It appears that some units may have the fan mounting too tight. The fans are mounted on rubber bushings but if the screws are too tight this defeats the whole purpose of the rubber mounts.

We've instituted a production check to make sure the screws are the correct tightness. Anyone experiencing excessive fan noise can contact support for an RMA to have the fan screws adjusted.
Click to expand...
How’s that for making things right?
 
Mine is the correct tightness(that's what she said!). I can't hear the fan until I put my ear very close to the III. Even then it's barley noticeable.
 
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