Almond+ Heat and Noises?

[jwmann]

Hi there,

My Almond+ has been running without reboot for about 9 Days now.
While walking by it recently I noticed noise coming from it.

It sounded like propane / gas leaking from a BBQ or something ( not that that's what I think the sound actually is )
I'm assuming this sound is coming from the Heat Sinks / Pipes cooling it down.

I put my hand over the top of the A+ near the vents and it seemed quite warm on my hand.

Does this sound like normal operation to you guys?

[LGNilsson]

As for heat, that's not really a problem and if you actually feel around the Almond+ I'm sure you'll quickly realise that it's just hot in the top left corner. The simple reason for this is that the heatpipe terminates here and there's a heatsink located here which dissipates the heat from the heatpipe. The Almond+ does get hot, but we've tested it for a month in 50 degree C/122 degrees F without any issues.

As for the noise, we've had a few reports about this and it's coil whining. This is a manufacturing tolerance issue with one of the power regulation components, but it's affecting less than 0.001% of the units we've shipped and you should only hear this noise when you're using the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. This is unfortunate and if it's very loud, we'll consider replacing your Almond+.

[jeffmcneill]

I've got the noise as well, it sounds like it is creaking. Is there a recommended work around in terms of muffling the sound?

[LGNilsson]

Afraid not. It's coming from a single component which is a coil of copper inside ferrite, so there's really nothing that can be done to muffle the sound.
What happens is that the coil is vibrating every so slightly which is producing the noise.
This happens sometimes in power supplies and you might've heard this from a PC power supply, motherboard or graphics card as well.
It's not entirely uncommon, but it can be very annoying.

[jeffmcneill]

No more noise, could be because the weather here is getting cooler, but maybe there was a "breaking in period" also. Good to go.

[Schwartz]

.001% really? Are you including all the original Almonds in that figure? I noticed mine has coil whine too when I went by it the other day. My Almond+ isn't near my PC so it isn't a big deal to me but if it was near me all the time it'd drive me bonkers.

[LGNilsson]

It doesn't affect the Almond and so far we've had only about 10 complaints about this in total, so yes, it's something like 0.001%, maybe 0.002% by now...
It actually only happens when you transfer data on the 2.4GHz, or at least that's the only way we've managed to reproduce the issue.

[ohadbasan]

I also hit that problem.
isn't there anything I can do?

[Amritendu]

@ohadbasan, sadly this happens in a very few units and is mostly coli whining when data transfer happens over the 2.4 GHz network. This being purely cosmetic doesn't effect performance. As far as heat goes, Router with a heat sync would get hot near the vents and its completely normal.