Shout out to @James_Milroy for the heads up, and folks at Overtek for shipping the alternative PSU with Noctua fan. It solved the problem for me. In case you missed it: Custom Enhance ENP-7660B PSU fitted in my desktop
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Hey folks, giving a quick update on my end because I’ve honestly hit a brick wall with Support, and I think everyone here needs to know what Framework’s official stance is behind closed doors.
After months of back-and-forth on my Framework Desktop, here is what my support saga looks like:
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First, they had me jumping through hoops trying fixes like doing a mainboard reset.
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They also asked me to run live USB Linux distros just to rule out the OS.
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Then they made me spend hours tearing down my daily driver to test and film both PSUs completely outside of the chassis.
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They finally sent me a replacement PSU, which somehow made the PSU fan noise much louder than the original.
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Next, they suggested doing a full mainboard swap. I pushed back on this because I would ALSO need to wipe my SSD and the computer is my daily driver for my business. I can’t afford the downtime.
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A frontline rep then admitted to me that mainboard swaps haven’t even solved this issue for anyone anyway. They have no engineered fix.
I was fed up, so I escalated the ticket all the way to Sandy, their Head of Customer Experience. I didn’t ask for a miracle. All I asked for was a commitment to monthly updates on their engineering progress, and a promise to authorize an alternative fix in 6 months if they still couldn’t produce a quiet PSU batch.
Sandy flat-out refused both requests.
I was officially told my only two options are to pack up the machine and return it for a full refund, or leave the ticket open indefinitely and wait for an update that might never come.
Let’s be real here. I’m 6 to 7 months into my 1-year US warranty. I have absolutely no doubt that Framework is just trying to run out the clock on this issue until our warranties expire so they can wash their hands of it. They have no actual fix, and apparently zero intention of keeping us updated.
Honestly, I’m just incredibly disappointed. I bought into Framework specifically because of their reputation for engineering prowess, modular innovation, and top-tier customer support. To see them completely stonewall a customer and offer an ultimatum instead of an engineering solution is a massive letdown.
Is anyone else getting this exact same runaround from support?
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I have a lot of sympathy with a poor support experience with this or that provider/supplier. However, a good (and scaling) support department generally has to have a process, and processes do sometimes miss edge cases. I feel your pain, but sometimes human communication is such that it looks like one side is being devious when, if there were any such thing as a neutral arbiter, perhaps they’re just doing what they can in a complex process.
It’s always hard to know how to strike the right balance. Maybe they could have a “break glass” support option - once they’ve spent $200 on labour investigating your case, they might as well give you a non-standard fan, even if it costs them another $100 to do so.
However, the full refund isn’t a bad option for your business continuity - could you buy a non-Framework machine, get a refund from Framework, but retain the drive? If you’d gone with Dell or HP I suspect this would not have been on the table.
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Thank you for sharing your experience. It is a shame users have to build suitable drop-in replacements because Framework can’t be arsed to fix this.
@Eagle you stated the team was looking into this. You ignored my latest ping on this issue - still interested in an update. Is @zzzz8 correct in their assessment that Framework decided to just ignore this issue? Would be nice to have some clarity.
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Thanks wolfie.
It got to the point where I was thinking Framework was “testing” me to see if they would break me to get me to drop the issue and/or then blame me for not following their suggestions. I followed all their suggestions and it amounted to hours of work on my part. My estimate is around 12+ hours.
What really disturbed me were two things. They sent me a PSU whose fan was noticeably worse when it came to the noise. It made me think that they sent me an old PSU fan just to test and make sure I wasn’t “lying” about the fan noise. Second, they proposed sending me a mainboard replacement knowing full well that it was unlikely to work (they admitted later that a mainboard replacement has NOT worked for anyone else in the past to fix the noise issue). Moreover, they specified that it was best for me to reinstall Ubuntu on my SSD once I got the new mainboard. To me, this shows a lack of respect for my time.
I’m sure my cynicism shows - and perhaps I’m a bit too cynical now, but my experience supports my cynicism.
I feel your pain. Went through multiple support & replacement processes for multiple devices myself. Even though it can be a pain sometimes I respect their need for multiple images and other proof. The sad part is that 1st level support is working off scripts that they have to follow, which can be quite off-putting, especially for very technical customers. Not talking about myself, but there are stories from people who clearly know what they are doing and bringing receipts, only to get canned replies and their findings mostly being ignored.
I appreciate Framework going the extra mile in fixing things and making affected users whole. Some issues took long but as far as I know they usually deliver in the end.
That said - I find their communication in those situations extremely lacking. See cracking FW12 chassis where it’s basically a single person dealing with us here in the forums.
The PSU fan issue being even worse. In the sense that they put out false advertisment for their product (see their blog post about complete silence, a fan that was developed / adjusted specifically for the PSU with their own profiles / curves, which just is not true). Again no communication at all and now them seemingly telling us to suck it up (which would be an alarming first).
So any official update would be really appreciated.
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Maybe a temporary (and not complete) workaround for the future buyers would be to give the option to get the DIY edition without the PSU.
It doesn’t really solve the problem, especially for people who already got it, but it could at least give the opportunity to new buyers to spend the money saved on something like what @James_Milroy did. And maybe it could also lower the weight put onto the support (which could then address each issue more thoroughly). 
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When we’re talking about more DIY approaches, I think it’s important to call notice to the mainboard-only purchase option. I just finished a mainboard build with a standard Corsair SFX PSU, and it’s performed wonderfully (and the PSU is silent). Not quite as small of a case, but still small form factor. This by no means excuses the problems in this thread, but I think it’s important for new buyers to know it’s a good option.
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Oh hey dude. You pinged me before? Sorry. Im not sure what happened. You know I would never and have never ignored you purposely. Its the weekend, so let me check and respond back as quickly as I can.
No worries. It was a regular post in this thread and easy to miss. It’s the community forum and not the support hotline after all.
Just curious about the state of fixing the PSU noise - especially seeing @zzzz8 quote from their support experience, which seems to have been escalated quite high internally. Wondering if PSU is a closed issue or if we can expect any update.
Personally if I am 100% honest I don’t even expect a free replacement, since I made my own modifications already. I would order a revised v2 though if it became available since I would very much prefer a PSU that I have not tinkered with and that is as advertised.
In my case the fan noise is covered by whine coil. I believe whine coil is coming from the PSU.
In heavy load, well… kind of… Mistfall hunter 1080 P at high settings,locked @60 FPS is the worst.
It’s most likely the VRMs. If they did one thing right with this horrible PSU - it’s supressing coil whine.
I had the same suspicion like you when i installed the first replacement mainboard but proved myself wrong when trying a different very old and known silent PSU.
Ok. So as promised, I was able to get an update from the internal teams. Straight from the horse(s) mouths::
“The power supply fan isn’t as quiet as we want it to be. We’ve been investigating ways to change the power supply cooling architecture since we shipped Framework Desktop. Unfortunately, we don’t have an ETA on when the results of that investigation will be available at this time.”
So TLDR:: They are still investigating. No ETA on when a reliable option to resolve the issue will be available yet… but it IS still being worked on actively.
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I guess the question that follows is, are people who’ve encountered issues with the PSU noise going to be able to get it exchanged or is it expected that it would have to be paid for?
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They didn’t come up with a solution while Overtek managed to produce and release a better PSU for your machine in the same time window. If it is true that is still being worked on actively, it says a lot about the level of Framework’s engineering team.
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I think this view is little single-sided. The original PSU is a customized unit from FSP. I assume there’s more to the issue than we can currently see.
Maybe FSP set wrong expectations,
maybe the retail units differ from the evaluation ones,
maybe the current values were in line with FWs expectations,
maybe QA on either side was lazy…
We dont’t know yet, but i do trust FW to find the cause and hopefully a solution. That solution may not improve the existing PSUs, but future devices are probably, one day, going to have proper, silent, efficient PSUs.
But til then, if you’re bothered by the noise and/or inefficiency, you’re going to be happier returning it and building your own PC with just the board.
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Chiming in with my +1 as a user experiencing this issue.
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I have the same issue. Support send me a new PSU, but it did behave exactly the same.
i happen to have a FLIR scan of the PSU in idle and i think it is too hot. 50C hotspots. i think i might have a look at other options soon. im not too fussed about fan, but you do bring up a good point, it idles with alot of power 