Let’s talk about P12 fans

Power Components
1

I have followed some of the P12 topics, and found there were some questions concerning P12 fans “problem” such as “ at 50C, fans not on…” or something like “will fans ever turn on…” Personally speaking, I really like to know how the P12 fans work. Searching PSA web did not find info I need, except on the product design page it says “…The next challenge was adding whisper fans to the bottom of the heat sinks; fans so quiet that…”. I have P12 purchased directly from PSA on April 28, arrived on May 2, and immediately put it to use. Here is my observation on how my P12’s fans work.

  1. Some basic, on my unit, fans are X-FAN RDL1225B2 made by http://en.x-fan.com/index.php a 100% Taiwanese funded company in China, with R&D in both China and Taiwan. My own opinion, these are good fans from a reliable company.
  2. Operations.
    a. When init power on (from the main power switch on the back) LCD screen on my P12 flash once and initialize show up, two fans start to run, then home screen shows up, and both fans stop.
    b. I have my room set at 85F, and have all my gears off at standby mode, P12 shows 33W load, fan on the back will eventually turn on. Thermostat on top of heat sink grill shows about 92F. Turn off P12 from remote and put it to standby mode, fan will eventually stop, since there is no power being regenerated. ( of course!, otherwise, my P12 might be sick!).
    c. Wake up my P12 with the remote and start to play some music, P12 shows 60w load ( l have SGCD /M700s, maybe put another post on my take about them in the future.), Fan on the front, eventually turn on.
    d. Do I ever see both fans on? Yes.
    Do I ever have both fan never on during my listen sessions? Yes.
    If I turn back my AC setting to below 80F, with typical 60w load on my P12, I don’t expect fans will on.
    e. Do these fans really quiet? Yes, I never notice them.
    Here is my experience concerning P12 fans, what is yours? I am interested to know. I am also interested to know how PSA test the P12 fans vs operating temperature (bake P12 in Paul’s gourmet oven maybe :slight_smile: )
2

I am interested in replacing the stock fans with Noctua NF-A12x25 FLX fans which are equivalent in terms of CFM, static pressure, dimensions, but 14 dB quieter. I can hear the current fans during quiet passages of music and it’s distracting, my rack is <5ft from my listening position. The fans appear to be surface mounted to the cooling fins but any tips on getting the lid off, there are lots of mounting screws on the underside, I’d hate to remove the wrong ones. The P12 has plenty of ventilation space and runs ~350W loading; I can’t fit a P15 in my rack so reducing fan noise is an obvious (low cost) option to combat noise w/o comprising cooling performance.

3

It is annoying to hear the noise.

  1. To get the top cover off, should be similar to what this YouTube video DirectStream Kit installation - YouTube described.
  2. I never notice the P12 fan noise, since I am 9 ft away from the rack, and my P12 only draws about 160W .
  3. I have elevated my P12 a little bit higher to about 2 inches. This seems to help the air flow.

Hope you will be able to swap the fans out to have a quieter P12.

4

Thanks. I’ve had my DS open a few times, so this should be straight forward. I’ll drop the updates once the fans arrive this weekend and I’ve got them switched out. The Noctua fans are hard to beat for noise performance, albeit for fans, they can be pricy.

5

Nice to have an update. Well, we love music more than our wallets (as long as I can do it under my “CFO” radar) :slight_smile: