I’ve had my Power Plant 5 for about 8 years. Originally, what appears to be the cooling fan would only come on occasionally. Lately, it seems to be on all the time and the unit does seem to get warm. Issue is the fan seems to be getting noisier. Assuming that the noise is the fan, is that a replaceable item? It’s loud enough that I can hear it from about 7-8 feet away though music will mask it. Just worried it will continue to get worse.
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It could be that there’s dust inside that’s causing the unit to get hotter. I’d certainly establish how to get into it and clean it and put in a new fan (they tend to be standard sizes and voltages).
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A can of compressed air should do it. I very much doubt you need to change anything. A fairly large (size 10 or 12) soft bristle artist’s paintbrush to loosen up the dust is also a good idea. Another useful tool is a photographic blower, if you have one of those.
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I have found fans in electronic equipment (computers, etc.) can also get noisy because of dust on the blades (perhaps it causes a little imbalance). I would thus also clean the fan blades and blow out where the moving fan parts attach to the fan body.
Be careful with compressed air however and hold a fan blade while spraying the blades. This can cause the blades to spin very fast and can damage a fan internally.
By the way, are the readouts on the unit all normal?
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Readouts are all normal so it seems to just be the noise issue. The dust issue makes sense. I will head down that path and report back. Thanks for the suggestions.
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We’re in the hottest time of year here and without AC, my gear certainly runs A LOT warmer. It could be the case that the P5 is consistently running hot enough to warrant the fans staying on.
The fans are pretty easy to replace so if they have gone noisy, we’d be happy to swap some new ones in there. Just give us a call.
Did finally get to open up the Power Plant to see if I could fix the noise. Not as dusty as I would have expected. It was one of the fans (there are 2). Couldn’t tell which one without a load so replaced both. Much quieter. Though replacing them takes a bit of dismantling.
Thanks all for the suggestions and thanks, James for the instructions
Glad you found a fix. Like the vast majority of auto repairs… The time and effort spent getting to the faulty part far exceeds the actual swap itself or the price paid for the replacement.
So very true. There are many repairs where it would be easy if the part was accessible and on a work bench.
Coincidentally, I just replaced a noisy fan in a TiVo unit. Satisfying.
Awesome, glad that worked out! Hope it didn’t give you too much of a hassle.