Just got AxeII... wow, fan noise.

The problem is multi-faceted.
As with everything, everyone's milage will vary (EMWV). Where some will receive units with fans that operate well, others will not. Where some are quite tolerant, others are not. Where some are easily tamed and assuaged (some perhaps as per the psychology of cognitive dissonance), others are unable to accept anything but acceptable resolution. Just because XYZ is not bothered does not mean that others are not, nor does it eliminate or reduce the validity of those concerns/complaints in any way or amount.

Want the simple reason this thread exists? Some Axe recipients have found issue; this is a fact. The issue has been resolved with a direct replacement from Fractal for some of those people; this is also fact. Some desire a yet quieter solution, but a definitive list of acceptable fans does not exist, thus those in search of this have no solid foundation to even begin building upon. Produce a couple acceptable replacements that fall within Fractal spec tolerance, Wiki them, and this thread would likely be set afloat on an ice floe.

I have SPD and part of that involves certain upper frequency content types; the stock fan is offensive for me. It may be a defective, or underperforming fan. I have not requested a replacement yet, as I have been researching a replacement that might exceed the stock one while remaining within the tolerances of spec that Cliff has described in various places in this forum. Currently, I must place a gobo in front of my rack and use Axe Edit while the Axe is on.
 
Mine was changing speed and was very loud when it arrived. I opened the top and found the fan to be quite loose. I tightened it up against the grommets better and it is now much quieter and doesn't fluctuate like it did before.
 
My axe 2 fan doesnt seem loud to my ears, maybe its a hit and miss thing.
Of course i used to the fan noise on my Mesa IV and V so i guess compared to those the Axe 2 is quite
 
shemihazazel said:
Yes, any and all fan noise from the Axe-II is annoying. Yes, it's innevitible. Yes, there may be some things you can do to make slight improvements to it, but only slight. Maybe Cliff can spin off a division of Fractal to manufacture fans in-house. :roll
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Do you have certain knowledge as to what amount of noise is inevitable? Do you know that it is impossible for my Axe-Fx II to have similar noise levels as my 4-year old standard? Do you know for a sheer fact "only slight" improvements could ever be made to the noise level of the unit sitting in front of me?

If you do, I'd be interested in how you came by this knowledge and why the noise can't be helped. If you do not, however, I would much appreciate it if you could refrain from your eye-rolling condescension while sober people discuss the issue in an effort to find acceptable solutions or even just workarounds for it.
 
My mk2 is too loud to use in the studio, i have had to move it to another room.
As well as overwhelming quieter passages when mixing, it is more than loud enough to be picked up by mics, and since it pops loudly when powered up or down, I don't want to be jumping up to mute channels, powering it up and down and resyncing with edit every few minutes

I am certain quieter solutions exist, these chips have much lower heat output than any typical intel CPUs, my guess is they are similar output to many motherboard chipsets, although finding that out from the analog website seems hard.
I have been fitting improved cooling to my PCs for 10 years now, and believe a large flower cooler on each chip, and possibly a quiet slow fan with some chassis slots would be fine, these chips are not in the same league as intel or AMD CPUs for power output, if you ran modern CPUs in the same way as a mk2, with a small fan just pointed at them, with a cheap northbridge-style heatsink, in a sealed case, they would blow within a few minutes. Clearly the tigersharc has much lower cooling needs than the PC industry already provides solutions for, see Quiet PC UK - Silent Motherboard and RAM Cooling

I think if I explained to a technical friend that my £2k fx box can't be used in my studio because it has a noisy fan, and he asked "are they high heat output processors? Is the case vented? Are the heatsinks and fan modern spec?", he'd think I'd bought something the was not intended for studio use, and think I'd made a mistake. Are the units not intended for studio use?
 
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FractalAudio said:
A larger diameter fan probably wouldn't help. A larger diameter affords the same CFM at a lower RPM. However, heatsink dissipation (i.e. thermal resistance) is a function of LFM (LINEAR feet/min), not CFM. So you would still need to run the fan at the same speed.

Large fans are great for moving VOLUME into and out of a case quietly. To cool a heatsink you need linear velocity, not volume.

A larger heatsink may help, but again case dimensions limit what is possible. Furthermore, the heatsink used are those recommended by the chip manufacturer and are readily available.

Vents are only needed if the TOTAL dissipation of the unit is high. The Axe-Fx II dissipates very little total power, probably less than 20W. More than half that power is generated by the DSPs. So it's a LOCAL cooling problem. It's no different than blowing on your food to cool it. You don't need to open the windows for this to work.

The stock fan is probably faster than need be but I designed the unit to withstand extremely high ambient temperatures as reliability is paramount.
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I realize this is my first post here, but I have been a lurker for a while.
Further, I respect that using my first post to disagree with the head-honcho of a website could be interpreted as completely dumb, and possibly even brazen.

With that said, I have to question what you are saying here, Cliff, that "cooling a heatsink requires linear velocity not volume" - I think you may be expressing your thoughts in the wrong terms. To cool a heatsink, you need surface area. A heatsink, employed as a method for cooling a computer processor, must both quickly absorb the heat from the chip as well as efficiently dissipate that heat. While I rest assured that you fully understand the science behind the why's and how's of cooling, I don't think you are right in saying that a larger fan wouldn't help. If I understand correctly, you are saying the heatsinks used are insufficient for the heat being generated by the DSPs. This is a common problem. Not trying to disrespect.

With case dimensions being the restraining factor, one common workaround for insufficient heatsink dissipation is to affix a cooling fan in direct proximity to the heatsink. I believe that is what you are getting at by the "blowing on your food" reference vs. opening a window. This has long been done with PC CPUs and video cards by attaching a smaller fan to the heatsink itself. Once the heat is dissipated from the small, inefficient heatsink, we can then remove that heat with case fans.

You mention that inside the Axe-FX units, around half of the total unit's heat is generated by the DSP chips, that the rest of the unit generates very little heat. 10 watts is not a lot of thermal energy to have to dissipate. It is if it is concentrated on two chips, but if it were possible to employ either a more efficient heatsink, or actively dissipate the heat from the currently-used heatsinks, using a quieter case fan should certainly be feasible. Airflow is airflow - 30cfm is still 30cfm whether it is from a slower, larger fan or a noisier, smaller fan. A well-placed vent or two with an exhaust fan in the rear should be sufficient to cycle enough air, once that heat has been dissipated out of the chips and into the case.
 
DominoDoggy said:
Airflow is airflow - 30cfm is still 30cfm whether it is from a slower, larger fan or a noisier, smaller fan. A well-placed vent or two with an exhaust fan in the rear should be sufficient to cycle enough air, once that heat has been dissipated out of the chips and into the case.
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If you need to cool a small area, say 0.1 sq. ft., will a 100 ft. diameter fan spinning at 1 RPM cool it as efficiently as a 0.1 ft. fan spinning at 1000 RPM? Both provide the same CFM.

CFM is irrelevant to a heatsink's thermal resistance. The thermal resistance is a function of LINEAR airflow velocity. CFM is a measure of the total air moved, NOT the linear velocity.
 
Hey Fractal,
If this can be mentioned at the time of placing an order, can you ensure you fit the unit with a silent fan?
 
DominoDoggy said:
... I don't think you are right in saying that a larger fan wouldn't help...
...A well-placed vent or two with an exhaust fan in the rear should be sufficient to cycle enough air, once that heat has been dissipated out of the chips and into the case...
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Can we PLEASE stop telling Cliff and the crew at Fractal how to design their own stuff? If there's one thing I've learned here, it's that Adam, Cliff, and Matt are extremely knowledgeable guys who have produced a great product. The incredible firmware updates should be enough proof. Random forum members telling them how to "fix" things isn't going to help. They chose to design the AxeFX-II the way they wanted to. If you don't like it, then you have all the freedom in the world to go and buy another product.

It's like half of the people complaining about the fan or telling Cliff what to do don't even own an AxeFX-II.


And FWIW, my fan isn't loud or noisy.
 
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slash07 said:
Hey Fractal,
If this can be mentioned at the time of placing an order, can you ensure you fit the unit with a silent fan?
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Dude.. give it a rest pls. As I mentioned in other threads (since you insist on re-hashing it).. if you are basing your Axe-II purchase decision on fan-noise, then save yourself the trouble and go buy an HD500 or an 11R. You'll be happier.

Fractal puts a particular fan model in there because that is the best fan that Cliff could find that worked at it's rated CFM. As I mentioned before some fans are perceived to be noisier than others (they ARE mechanical), so if you buy the Axe-II you get the STOCK fan from the US, or the one G66 puts in there if you get your there. You can swap the US model version for a quieter one if yours turns out to be one of "those" noisey fans. Shouldn't be an issue...
End of story...
 
If the fan bothers you then spend another $15 and replace it with a ‘silent' fan. Swapping a fan in most electronic equipment is a simple task.
 
Someone asked for info on the fan that's in the current Axe, so I took some pics.

My unit shipped on 3/12/2012. It has an 80mm fan. The hum of the fan is barely noticeable.


AxeSN.jpg


AxeFan1.jpg


AxeFan2.jpg


AxeFan3.jpg
 
s0c9 said:
Dude.. give it a rest pls. As I mentioned in other threads (since you insist on re-hashing it).. if you are basing your Axe-II purchase decision on fan-noise, then save yourself the trouble and go buy an HD500 or an 11R. You'll be happier.

Fractal puts a particular fan model in there because that is the best fan that Cliff could find that worked at it's rated CFM. As I mentioned before some fans are perceived to be noisier than others (they ARE mechanical), so if you buy the Axe-II you get the STOCK fan from the US, or the one G66 puts in there if you get your there. You can swap the US model version for a quieter one if yours turns out to be one of "those" noisey fans. Shouldn't be an issue...
End of story...
Click to expand...
May this thread rest in peace!
 
Phostenix said:
Someone asked for info on the fan that's in the current Axe, so I took some pics.

My unit shipped on 3/12/2012. It has an 80mm fan. The hum of the fan is barely noticeable.
Click to expand...

I got mine in February of this year. It came with the 60mm version of that fan.
 
jma said:
I got mine in February of this year. It came with the 60mm version of that fan.
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Very interesting. I wonder if you can retrofit the larger fan without modding the lid? I didn't look closely while I had it apart, but I know that the lid doesn't have any mounting screws for the fan going through it. I assume that the mounting screws or nuts are pressed into the lid. I suppose you could always drill new holes in the top, but that wouldn't be my ideal choice.
 
There must be units with loud fans, mine is very quiet, about the same as an Imac.

Do not replace the fan in axe 2 for a silent fan as they do not cool things down enough, Words from cliff.
 
It is the "Believe or Leave" BS that seems to be prevalent here that drove me away. I was trying to decide which fan thread to post in when I saw this one had activity.. (sigh)...

I am one of the people that is a "trouble maker" I suppose. IMO, my fan was obnoxiously loud and had a high-pitched whine. It was one of the original models. I waited for Fractal to switch to a new fan before requesting a replacement. I am psychologically unable to replace the stock fan without express permission to do so, and then only able to do so only with a Fractal approved fan. Once they had a new fan being used, I asked for a replacement, and received the new "Top Motor" fan (pictured in an above post). The new fan is a more solidly built unit (feels like an alloy frame versus cheap molded plastic of the original); it is heavier as well. It is a direct replacement, though, possibly due to construction material difference, it took more effort to slide it into place.

Once in place and closed up, the noise is significantly less. I know I could find an even quieter, equally capable (matched) fan, and will do so when the warranty has lapsed. An improvement, and free under warranty, I thank Fractal for this. At least now I do not grit my teeth when I know I have to power the Axe on.
 
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