Audible humming / ticking in fit-PC3

gabrielh
Site Admin
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Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 1:13 pm

Re: Audible humming / ticking in fit-PC3

Post by gabrielh »

Intense PC has about the same amount of the humming, but I think it is very subjective judging. In my case, I have to adjust my ear to the FitPC's case to hear the humming with the Aggressive Power Management disabled
Gabriel Heifets

Fit-PC2/3/IntensePC support.

emurach
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Aug 29, 2012 12:18 am

Re: Audible humming / ticking in fit-PC3

Post by emurach »

My Fit-PC3 used to never have this humm. I noticed it when I relocated to my bedroom. I ask myself if it was the last BIOS update to _12 that introduced this. Sounds like the MOSFETS. I read this forum. As an Electronics Tech. This is not normal. I've only seen Vaiacs do this.

gabrielh
Site Admin
Posts: 1260
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 1:13 pm

Re: Audible humming / ticking in fit-PC3

Post by gabrielh »

BIOS update only features the option to disable aggressive power management. It doesn't add humming, but offers acoustic benefits in exchange to increased power consumption.
Gabriel Heifets

Fit-PC2/3/IntensePC support.

roblucid
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:17 pm

Re: Audible humming / ticking in fit-PC3

Post by roblucid »

I've found this disturbing, even with Aggressive Power Mangaement disabled, I suspected my Crucial M500 SSD as the noise tends to occur during disk access, especially when I ran 'hdparm -t /dev/sda' to verify I had SSD not notebook drive like read speeds.

Enabling Aggro PM, makes the ticks & hums happen more consistently, but I prefer it really as a justification for the fit PC3 was low power consumption, 24/7 availability.

The setup, I have a desktop PC nearby with Fan, with AMD 7750 fanless GPU, with multiple disks, their disks plus white noise of fan are objectively noisier, it's more the expecting silence due to no moving parts that draws attention to the fit PC3. I expect moving it back under desk level hidden will solve my distraction, though make the fit PC3's USB ports less convenient for disk backup etc. It's a peaceful, private office, but not a super silent environment, where I find the buzz can be annoyingly distracting.

If engineers are able to DESIGN out this kind of noise, even though it's a small noise issue compared to typical desktop/laptop fans and such, it would GIVE customers a reason to upgrade to newer model and place the fit PC3 in some noisier environment, whilst benefiting from the CPU advances made since the Bobcat design.

roblucid
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:17 pm

Re: Audible humming / ticking in fit-PC3

Post by roblucid »

Can't re-edit my post to add this, but an explanation to why this occurs (and a possible future solution) is at Reduce acoustic noise from capacitors. Think capacitors are used in switching mode power circuitry which lower voltage by turning on/off for shorter/longer periods to smooth the output.

Quite neat, I'm not sure how much more costly it would be to fit twin capacitors above/below the circuit board though

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