You said you installed the APU fan according to the official guide. That means it is an intake fan, right? I am really curious what impact it has on the PSU and internal case temperatures when you turn the APU fan around and make it an exhaust fan. APU temperatures will rise to some extend but what’s the impact on the PSU? If you blow out the hot air from the heat sink, instead of distributing it in the case, that should keep the case inside a lot cooler and as a consequence also help the PSU, at the expense of a hotter running APU. But this could be a tradeoff that is still worth it.
Have a look here: Framework Desktop review: Mini PC wrapped in a mini-ITX body - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
They initially mounted the fan in “suck” direction. IIRC they wanted to do an update with the position corrected.
Edit:
(September 18, 2025 update: CPU fan results in both orientations will be added soon!)
Looks like they never did the update, so they prob. did the whole review in that configuration.
Right now I’m running the APU fan at 30% and the 80mm at 25%. Both as intakes - like in the guides (labels facing inward).
With that config the PSU fan has not turned on yet after running a few hours.
With APU 25% the PSU still turned on maybe once or twice per hour.
As it’s pretty solid with 30% I think I will not turn it around to make it an exhaust. My main goal is to have a nearly silent machine. Turned around I assume I would also have it run at some minimum speed and would end up with the same result but with extra steps. At 30% I can faintly hear it if I really pay attention to it, but in general it’s barely noticeable. Much much better than the PSU fan anyway.
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Sorry, my bad. I posted without completing the sentence. It’s Framework Tool
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Update on my end: support asked for a video, update of bios, then offered to send me a new PSU this morning. They admitted they have no idea whether the new PSU will behave better. According to what @wolfie wrote above, it won’t 
You might get lucky. There seem to be some users not affected. Did a poll long ago and there were some people that said they had no issue..
At least from the people in this thread who had a replacement nobody had an improvement IIRC. Only the custom builds with different PSUs alltogether.
Framework seems to aknowledge that there is an issue and that they are investigating / working on it. The description in their deep-dive post on the PSU and how they market the machine as silent does not reflect reality. Them being completely silent is very frustrating, but given their track record with issues and fixing them in the end I’m hopeful we’ll get a solution some day.
Running the APU at a minimum speed is not ideal, but a good enough temporary workaround for me. At least currently in the winter months - we’ll see what summer brings 
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Hmm, could be a difference in ambient temperature, humidity, room air circulation …
Another theory was 110V vs 220V… could also be a mix of factors.
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Could be - at least on UK powergrid, I haven’t had an issue with the PSU noise at all (yet, knock on wood)
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I can confirm my PSU sounds almost exactly like that. Is that a bit of chirping/whining from the PSU as well in between the louder fan noises? I get a bit of coil whine, but if I’m understanding correctly, that seems to be common with all the stock PSUs?
I can say I don’t have any issue with noise on 110V in the US here. My theory is younger people can hear the higher frequencies that may be the source of this. As you age the highest registers degrade first.
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Just to add another data point:
I got my 128GB delivered on 12/26, and have been slowly getting it set up. Its purpose is as a home server, so it’s powered on 24/7, but (so far) it’s been mostly idle. Even still, the PSU fan seems to be on more frequently than off. I still need to sit down and try to measure it, but instead of the pattern people have been mentioning of ~2 minutes on, ~10 minutes off, it feels to me like it’s almost inverted, like it’s mostly on, and takes short breaks. The computer has plenty of access to open air, is completely unobstructed on all sides, and I’m in Vermont with cold winters, average ambient room temperature of ~70F. I live in a small apartment, and I can hear the fan easily above ambient noise within an 8-10 foot radius, which basically means my entire apartment other than the bedroom.
I’ve had my CPU fan at 25% with the Noctua fan as well and I still hear the PSU fan. I feel like it’s less frequent but I didn’t measure.
The PSU fan turning on in the context of the constant on 20-30% APU fan, misses an operational domain, where the APU is being utilized at low 5-20% but the APU fan curve still stays low rpm.
This causes the PSU fan to spin-up and enter the dreaded 100% cycle. So it, the issue if you can call it an issue, is in the curve of the APU fan.
But above all running the APU fan is a stop gap mitigation. It is not a solution.
Was the same for me. 30% was the threshold where most days it does not turn on at all all day. Maybe on two out of 10 days, but hardly ever with my usual light work / watching videos.
Also tried 35% which was fine of course too, but the fan is much more audible then. Much less annoying as the PSU fan, but I prefer it more silent at 30%.
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Framework sent me a replacement PSU, switching to the new PSU did not help.
Bit annoyed because I linked this thread in the support case and specifically asked them if they were confident the new PSU would help before they sent it. They didn’t really answer that, but were insisting this was something they needed to try to determine where the noise comes from…
Side note, but I’d be interested to know if there’s a different PSU that fits very well in the case. Not just form factor but cable lengths and so on. I found a couple which supposedly has customized cables to make them shorter (and one modular). But since this is fairly niche I’d really like to know that something works well before ordering myself. Anyone tried these or something similar?
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Stumbled upon this thread…
Yes my PSU fan is either off and silent or on and twice as loud as the CPU fan (under low-medium loads at least)
Does seem to be an issue there, the PSU fan is either off or noisy, there is nothing in-between, no evidence of PWM functionality.
Ordered myself the notuctua fan mentioned before and am going to print the adaptor…
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I didn’t get lucky, and the replacement fan I got from Framework behaves exactly the same. I didn’t want to spend an hour disassembling the computer just to realise I had wasted my time (like everyone else here) so I plugged it from the outside. Then I realised I could actually measure that stupid fan not ramping up, so here goes nothing:
ON/OFF, indeed.
Removed the fan duct; put a white dot on the fan where the small grove is; recorded with a gopro at 240 fps (put shutter speed a ~1/1000, needs good lighting); then passed the video in a vibe coded opencv script. I’ll put that on github in case anyone wants to reproduce.
The problem is really that the PSU becomes a hot box even outside of the case as the fan doesn’t spin before having to go full speed. The only reason I can think of is to avoid accumulating dust there, given that we can’t clean it. Is that a thing?
For ref, Framework does say the fan gradually ramps up here:
During low system load, the fan stays off, and once the threshold is passed, the fan gradually ramps to the target RPM
At full speed it is fairly quiet outside of the case though, so maybe the acoustic tests they claim to have done didn’t happen with the full computer around the fan.
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Thank you for the measurement, but to be fair, 2500 RPM is probably not the full speed of the fan. I don’t know exactly which fan it is from Delta’s catalogue, but usually 40mm fans can easily go beyond 6000 RPM at full speed.
That said, it would indeed be nice if the fan could run at lower speed than that, and even better if the PSU didn’t get so hot at low loads.
I’m not particularly proud of it, but:
I disassembled the PSU and removed the fan.
In its place, I installed a Noctua NF-A8 80 mm fan.
Because it was 5 mm thicker, I decided to break off the rear part of the power supply housing—the section with the grille.
I cut the cables with scissors and, by twisting them together with my fingers, adapted the Noctua fan to the new connector. I completely removed the yellow wire.
After that, I more or less forced everything back in so it would fit somehow.
And surprisingly, it runs noticeably quieter. I can tell it’s working by the perceptible airflow at the exhaust. And now it’s very quiet.
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