Axefx iii dsp fried

gave me an analogy of running a car engine constantly at high rpm and blowing the rings..

almost 10 years all my presets are over %80 CPU...frying anything on side i did even not experience axe fx freez 1 time.

And my rack has/had other units like power conditioner, ua apollo interface, matrix power amp etc...

i played 3-4 week tours with it, night after night in humid/hot clubs or open airs under the sun. Zero issues since yet!
 
The key here is they replaced the whole board. Not the DSP chip. So there are hundreds components that could actually fry. For example a capacitor, which is very common.
I don't buy that a DSP got fried story from a tech who replaces the whole board to fix the unit. I can "fix" things that way too ;)
BTW, that's how they repair thing at Apple.
 
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Computer chips don't wear out.

They do actually (once upon a time I was an avid overclocker) but that's only when you seriously overclock and overvoltage the chips and in this case, the inadequate cooling system speeds up the process so the degredation*** process takes effect and after that, it's just a matter of time. This is not the OP's or AF3's case though, not even close.

A blown up chip is also kinda rare nowadays since most if not all chips have internal thermal/power protection (first they will start to throttle down and in extreme cases they will shut down to protect themselves). The first and last time I blew up a chip was like 20 years ago and it was an AMD Athlon, those didn't have a built in thermal protection system (the thermal sensor was on the motherboard not inside the CPU) so once the cooler totally failed (and of course the motherboard sensor had failed as well, thanks Murphy!), it gave up the ghost (with a nice puff of smoke) a couple of minutes later.

***When a chip starts degrading it just can't normally operate at the nominal frequency and voltage without errors, so when that happens the only options are to either drop the frequency, or pump up the voltage or both these.
 
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They do actually (once upon a time I was an avid overclocker) but that's only when you seriously overclock and overvoltage the chips and in this case, the inadequate cooling system speeds up the process so the degredation*** process takes effect and after that, it's just a matter of time. This is not the OP's or AF3's case though, not even close.

A blown up chip is also kinda rare nowadays since most if not all chips have internal thermal/power protection (first they will start to throttle down and in extreme cases they will shut down to protect themselves). The first and last time I blew up a chip was like 20 years ago and it was an AMD Athlon, those didn't have a built in thermal protection system (the thermal sensor was on the motherboard not inside the CPU) so once the cooler totally failed (and of course the motherboard sensor had failed as well, thanks Murphy!), it gave up the ghost (with a nice puff of smoke) a couple of minutes later.

***When a chip starts degrading it just can't normally operate at the nominal frequency and voltage without errors, so when that happens the only options are to either drop the frequency, or pump up the voltage or both these.
That’s not really wearing out, that’s pushing them beyond their ratings until they fail. Keep them within their specs and they will seldom have problems.

We used to overclock our chips to eke out as much speed as possible from our computers but we’d also turn off the RAM refresh to get a real boost. They’d run really fast, at least until the RAM forgot the code that it was supposed to be storing.
 
That’s not really wearing out, that’s pushing them beyond their ratings until they fail. Keep them within their specs and they will seldom have problems.

We used to overclock our chips to eke out as much speed as possible from our computers but we’d also turn off the RAM refresh to get a real boost. They’d run really fast, at least until the RAM forgot the code that it was supposed to be storing.

I agree, and since we've already taken out of the equation the factor "overclocking/overvolting", chips in theory do wear out over time due to electromigration but honestly with the current manufacturing methods and materials that should take many many maaaaaaany decades (even say with inadequate cooling). And I wrote "in theory" because personally, in real life, I've never seen a case like that and I got into computers and hardware in early 80ies.

But, I digress...

Bottom line, this is not the OP's or AF3's case.
 
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I just had to pay $700 plus tax and shipping to have my dsp board replaced. I had created a template that basically had everything I would ever want in one and it clocked in at around 82% cpu utilization and when I used axe edit I would see the high utilization warning. I didn’t think it was the cause of the failure but I asked tech support and they said it could have caused the failure. The tech literature only indicated it could become sluggish at high cpu but I had no issues with that. What should be the max cpu then? Maybe they need to put a bigger heat sink on the chips?
This is not sound info.
 
I just had to pay $700 plus tax and shipping to have my dsp board replaced. I had created a template that basically had everything I would ever want in one and it clocked in at around 82% cpu utilization and when I used axe edit I would see the high utilization warning. I didn’t think it was the cause of the failure but I asked tech support and they said it could have caused the failure. The tech literature only indicated it could become sluggish at high cpu but I had no issues with that. What should be the max cpu then? Maybe they need to put a bigger heat sink on the chips?
Fractal doesn’t need anyonedefending them, so don’t take me wrong: what happened sucks @ss, but it’s the first time that I hear that, and I’ve been using Fractal stuff for the last 11 years.
A machine is a machine, so it can always fail, and the high cpu usage could be a sign of something wrong in the motherboard and chips, as well: in that way the support simply say that “it could be”
Can you really rule out a serious power surge in your electrical line ? I’ve seen thousands of euro of high end stuff go extra crispy because of that.
 
Well now I'm nervous. It seems this isn't the only guy recently that's had a dsp fail on an Axfx3. Here's another one. He posted 3 videos and in my conversation with him it also cost him around 700. His was just past the warranty period too. How sh!tty.

 
Thats crazy have never seen that
the only fried AXE i recall a few guys plugging in an FC into the Midi jacks on the 2 but 2 of the Axe3in the last month is odd
 

The sound on the first video sounds like "coil whine" to me, I've experienced this phenomenon a few times with PSUs (PC, powered USB hubs and other powered devices), motherboards and VGAs.

Strange thing is, I don't hear that sound on the 2nd video...
 
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