How to make the Framework Desktop run even quieter

lwhsiao | 296 points

I have a 3D printer I bought a few years ago and I keep it in my office. It was quite loud as is and I sent through the process of quieting it down. Fans were a big part of it. It has four of them: power supply, main board, and two on the hot end/extruder. Noctua was what was mostly recommended, but (a) price and (b) at the time I believe they mostly or only had 12 volt fans and this printer ran on 24V so each fan would need a voltage converter board.

Well turns out you can get quieter and cheaper fans on e.g. Mouser or Newark that are 24V compatible. They let you sort and filter by size, voltage, noise level, and volume per minute so I found the quietest possible fans that still move roughly the same volume of air as the stock ones. The price was half to a quarter of equivalent Noctua fans (excluding converters) at that time.

From what I hear (pun intended) Noctua makes a great product both functionally and aesthetically, but don’t overlook industrial suppliers either.

IgorPartola | 2 hours ago

Only slightly off topic but I sincerely wish Noctua was everywhere else in my life.

Like I’d love for them to make my HVAC system quieter.

Or table fans. Or car air conditioners.

Just about every fan in my life would be better if Noctua redesigned it.

They’d be like Dolby, but for making LESS noise.

atonse | 12 hours ago

This guy has built a completely silent version: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/monochrome-2-my-cu...

bryanlarsen | 17 hours ago

Not surprising that Noctua is the favorite Buy it for Life producer from Austria by far: https://bifldb.com/austria/ Congrats.

vicwiller | 2 hours ago

Is Framework planning to ship this at some point? It seems pretty bad to need to print your own grill when Noctua collaborated on the project.

al_borland | 17 hours ago

Its really cool how, despite the core chip at the heart of the Framework Desktop not being that extensible, Framework went out of their way to make the FD as extensible and modular as possible, and are fostering a community of 3D printing stuff around it.

logicprog | 12 hours ago

I loves me some Noctua. I suspect that the very quiet single 120mm is enough to keep air moving sufficiently through my 3090 GPU server chassis (though I also put a couple 80mm where 4U chassis airflow narrows in the rear, just to be safe).

I also put Noctuas in short-depth 1U servers and routers at home, usually 40mm.

neilv | 9 hours ago

Gotta give it the old Noctua and blow on that thang. Their fans are seriously awesome. I didn’t believe the hype at first until a Ryzen build was 5-15C cooler, and a lot quieter.

rubiquity | 10 hours ago

Nocuta is a case study in how to make a high quality and luxury product to dominate a seemly small market. In a seemingly commoditized market where fans can be had for $3-$4 Nocuta still demands and get's $30-$40 dollars.

nodesocket | 11 hours ago

Too bad the most recent fanless Nvidia card is the RTX 3050 6GB, wish there was a 4060 8GB released

https://www.palit.com/palit/vgapro.php?id=5147&lang=en

haunter | 12 hours ago

With the all-flat layout of the Ryzen APU and soldered memory I always though the framework desktop MB would be ideal for a single waterblock covering the entire MB.

ginko | 16 hours ago

Aside: any chance to load a real GPU like a 4070 or 5070 in this system, maybe even on the side?

orliesaurus | 9 hours ago

I would really be interested in desktop if so many items weren't non-upgradable. It's bad enough the CPU and GPU, but understandable, cannot be upgraded, you're stuck with the selected memory at purchase too. Even the laptops have up-gradable memory and that's typically where you would see memory soldered to the board.

hk1337 | 15 hours ago

> It must be noted that customer safety and EMC requirements for the mini PC, a standalone electrical item, differ from those for hardware components (such as the PSU) designed to be inside a PC case. The safety standard suggests that ventilation openings on case side panels need to be less than 5mm in diameter.

...but it's a plastic panel? I don't understand how this helps with EMC.

wren6991 | 16 hours ago

So much work just because AMD can't create a good APU like Apple with the MacMini! WTF!

thehias | 2 hours ago

If I were that concerned about noise from my computers, I would leverage the inverse square law and put them in another room and use long video and input cables.

sneak | 8 hours ago

So just use Noctua fans? That'd do it.

therein | 18 hours ago

There is no way the EMC situation is maintained with that modification.

jeffbee | 16 hours ago