The right fan on the graphic module is rubbing against something when there is a pressure on it. When I spin it manually - it’s quiet. When I press on the box a little bit - it makes noise. The left fan is quiet even with the pressure.
One person said there was a sticker under the fan that had wrinkles in it and the fan would rub on that sticker. They were able to smooth out the sticker and it fixed the noise. Another poster said there was a little, plastic nub left over somewhere from the molding process and they were able to just pull it off.
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I don’t see anything. It’s like the actual box is either slightly bent or too soft so when I apply pressure (or when the actual laptop applies pressure on it in the assembled state) the box rubs against the blades.
I apply just a little bit of pressure with my finger in the middle of the fan and it’s already making noise and doesn’t spin as freely. When I applied a good amount of pressure on the left fan it still spins properly without rubbing anything.
To OP’s question though - the laptop is super quiet and smooth. I just played a round of Dota 2 on maximum settings with an external stereo system and a large monitor with a bunch of other apps open and a lot of tabs in the browser. Everything works as expected except that loud fan which I hope they can replace for free in case I won’t be able to fix it.
P.S. I’m limited to uploading only 2 pictures at a time 
To me, it looks like the black mask isn’t seated properly and the fan thus can be rubbing on it. The photo seems to show a bend and tiny scratch marks in an arc at the right edge as indicated below:
Maybe an alignment problem when mounting the mask (offset to the top where the arrow points to).
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That’s a valid theory but unfortunately, I think it’s not the case. That’s just a tape on top of the metal base which seems to be the same on both sides. It’s just squished down on the right side more. I observed it visually and cannot find any differences that could cause the issue. But even 1/10 of a millimeter could make a difference and that kind of scale wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.
OMG, it was this tiny thing. It’s like a piece of silicone sticking out. The laptop sounds so smooth now! I couldn’t even figure out if the fans are on or not until I put a good load on my GPU. I can hear them spinning now but the sound is soft and not loud.
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Nice! Glad you found it.
in my personal experience, yes. I have a 13 AMD 7040 Series running Plasma and Linux and after motorizing the temps for a while i can say it gets around 40-60C on average when working with proper airflow, im a web developers so not much processing power being used.
On the other fan the fans don’t get that loud, personally i think people are overexaggerating the noise level but i can definitely say the fans dont kick on until the laptop gets HOT, like 80+C hot, then they kick on full speed which can be why some people have a problem with the noise
I’m reading your comments… did you solve the noisy fan issue?
I have a child and it would be a big problem when I work or play
Steam itself should be using the iGPU rather than dGPU for loading profile background animation and stuff. Check if there’s any setting(s) to set which GPU to use per program.
The dGPU fans cool both the internal apu and the dgpu. It doesn’t mean steam is using the dGPU. Most likely steam was installing/updating something or compiling shaders, which taxes the CPU.
(In reply to Lupin’s comment)
Unfortunately no. As much as I liked the machine the fan noise was just too much for me, so I returned it for a refund and got a mobile workstation from one of the big OEMs instead.
If you really want to use this machine for demanding games and have quieter fans, my recommendation would be to use a quiet eGPU so the laptop doesn’t have to work as hard.
But did you try limiting the resolution and fps?
That is to say, all laptops are noisy when you play with the dedicated graphics card. That’s why I wonder if you tried playing at lower resolutions like 1080 p and 60 fps.
Or if you tried a fan control program.
Turning down settings, lowering resolution, capping fps, and playing less demanding games will certainly help if you’re willing to do that.
The problem is that all laptop gamers make a lot of fan noise at high resolutions.
But I don’t know if this is something unusual in this case…
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If you’re comparing it to other gaming laptops, especially slim ones, I don’t think the noise from the FW16 is unusual. My expectations for fan noise are pretty skewed because I’ve mostly owned large mobile workstations and desktop-replacement laptops in the past.
The one thing I think Framework can do better is to mitigate the high frequency component to the FW16’s fan noise. If it was just a loud “whoosh” sound I might have kept mine. Though it seems like a lot of gaming laptops currently on the market have a problem with high pitched fans, and maybe that’s something that only the manufacturers of the fans themselves can fix.
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All the reviews criticize the issue of fans. For a content creator that is a big problem.
Of course, in the case of a framework it is easy to solve it because all the components can be changed.
I love framework, they are doing a wonderful job.
Framework is a work of engineering art but it would pain me to have to return the equipment for this problem.
I have a small child. I have an xmg fusion m22. If the noise is the same there will be no problem but more noise, my girlfriend will probably tell me to leave home, xdd
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Thanks, 53 db in balanced mode seems like very high fan noise to me and much higher than normal.
In balanced mode is everything working at its maximum? That is resolution and fps?
I just got my FW16 a week and a half ago. The only time my fans get really loud is when it’s booting up, which is probably because I haven’t done anything to address the excess background processing Windows 11 is doing. Once the machine is done booting up, it’s practically silent regardless of what I’m doing.
That being said, I’m not sure I’d want to actually place this on my lap for long periods of time because it does get pretty warm. Every laptop I’ve ever owned, both PCs and Macs, have gotten uncomfortably hot on me at some point. On my desktop config, I have placed the FW16 on a Cooler Master NotePal X-Slim, which isn’t the quietest laptop cooler you can get but it fits in the limited space under my monitor riser. If you have the space, get a Thermaltake. They seem to be a little nicer and quieter.