Fractal Design Announces Replacement of Fan Hubs in Torrent Series PC Cases

[TheLostSwede]

They could all start testing their products, that would be even nicer. As fast as this happened after lauch if they had tested a couple units they could have avoid it.

Is no-one reading my posts here? There's nothing wrong with the design.
The issue happened during manufacturing, someone was sloppy, it wasn't caught during QA/QC as my understanding is that their normal QA/QC staff didn't do the inspection due to travel bans etc.

 

[Bomby569]

Is no-one reading my posts here? There's nothing wrong with the design.
The issue happened during manufacturing, someone was sloppy, it wasn't caught during QA/QC as my understanding is that their normal QA/QC staff didn't do the inspection due to travel bans etc.

that seems like a lot of BS, just ship a couple of cases to whoever does the QC

Exactly, that could've been squeezed in a 2-3min video. That's why I rarely watch GN videos as they're way too long, still good stuff though.

the longer the video the more ads they can add.

 

[Ruru]

the longer the video the more ads they can add.

Good point, though I can't even remember when I watched youtube videos last time without using adblock (mobile doesn't count).

 

[TheDeeGee]

that seems like a lot of BS, just ship a couple of cases to whoever does the QC



the longer the video the more ads they can add.

Ads?

uBlock Origin on PC and YouTube Vanced on Android.

 

[Ruru]

Ads?

uBlock Origin on PC and YouTube Vanced on Android.

Sucks that there isn't a similar solution for iOS.

 

[Ferrum Master]

That connector is rated at 250V/3A according to your datasheet.

And kinda is not enough? You understand what current and voltage ratings mean. I am using Gentle Typhoons. As any center hub heavy fans will have high start current. But at least mine has a datasheet. It ranges even from 3-6W power. If it will exceed the current rating(we don't care for voltage here, no need to feed mains), the pins will heat up and the temperature will rise and automatically resistance. With greater resistance more loss, more heat... it can induce a domino effect to a simple meltdown.

Well I will say again... it is not sane to hook up 9 devices using that... some idiot will overabuse it and cause potential damage. And there is no lack of such people. There's no warning to no to do so either.

Even a china knock off fan hubs reside a proper SATA power connector. Isn't it weird for them to not to gimp some cents on something?

 

[TheLostSwede]

that seems like a lot of BS, just ship a couple of cases to whoever does the QC

I guess you've never done QA/QC work?
Producing in the PRC requires a lot more QA/QC compared to many other countries.
Also, companies in the PRC often don't tell you if there's an issue, they just do what they're told to do.
So if you don't have boots on the ground as some people like to say, you might not discover that there's a problem until it's too late.

And kinda is not enough? You understand what current and voltage ratings mean. I am using Gentle Typhoons. As any center hub heavy fans will have high start current. But at least mine has a datasheet. It ranges even from 3-6W power. If it will exceed the current rating(we don't care for voltage here, no need to feed mains), the pins will heat up and the temperature will rise and automatically resistance. With greater resistance more loss, more heat... it can induce a domino effect to a simple meltdown.

Well I will say again... it is not sane to hook up 9 devices using that... some idiot will put overabuse it and cause potential damage. And there is no lack of such people. There's no warning to no to do so either.

Even a china knock off fan hubs reside a proper SATA power connector. Isn't it weird for them to not to gimp some cents on something?

So you happen to own one of the very few fans that are rated higher than 350mA, great, lucky you.
I guess you missed the fact that the case comes with five fans that are designed to work well with the case already?
Of those fans, none are over 350mA.
The connector supports 250V DC or AC... Anyhow...
Again, this thing was designed for normal case fans, not edge cases. Maybe they should've done some more research, but c'mon, when 99.9% of PC case fans seems to follow a common standard...

And where are you going to fit that connector in the space they placed the fan hub in?

 

[Bomby569]

I guess you've never done QA/QC work?
Producing in the PRC requires a lot more QA/QC compared to many other countries.
Also, companies in the PRC often don't tell you if there's an issue, they just do what they're told to do.
So if you don't have boots on the ground as some people like to say, you might not discover that there's a problem until it's too late.

being completely honest i have never worked with QC as what i do has nothing to do it manufacturing, but i also thing it's pretty irresponsabile to ship without a proper QC whatever the reasons are. Either you do it or don't ship it, especially with electronics that can't burn your house down, can hurt someone, can take other products that cost hundreds of dollars for example.
Consequences could be really bad.

 

[TheLostSwede]

being completely honest i have never worked with QC as what i do has nothing to do it manufacturing, but i also thing it's pretty irresponsabile to ship without a proper QC whatever the reasons are. Either you do it or don't ship it, especially with electronics that can't burn your house down, can hurt someone, can take other products that cost hundreds of dollars for example.
Consequences could be really bad.

Well, that's not quite what happened.
They obviously had someone that was supposed to do QA/QC, but who didn't do their job properly.
Ever worked with someone that doesn't care? I have and that's when issues happen.
So what you're saying is that no company in the world that makes products in the PRC right now, should ship anything?
As everyone's in the same boat right now and have been for quite some time.

This issue would at most have made your fans to short out, we're not talking a mains power issue here, unlike the recent Gigabyte issue that could have caused much much bigger problems.

I just love how everyone that has never worked in the manufacturing industry has ideas on how things should've been done here. We're in a bit of an unusual situation right now and under normal circumstances, if you know what you're doing, which I'm pretty sure the people at Fractal Design do after all these years, you have your own people in the factory to check on production.
Sure, things can still happen, but it's far less likely. I've had to stop the production of products in the past, as screwups happened. In one specific case, the engineer didn't listen and decided to cut some corners, because it was easier that way. In another case, the product designer "knew best" and didn't listen and I had to find a workaround. This is why you need to have multiple people involved.

It's really not an easy business to be in, as you rely on multiple suppliers and everyone has to do their job correct, or there can be a problem. At one point, a supplier changed their tooling, but didn't actually check the output of the new tooling, which meant that the final product wasn't according to spec. The outcome of that, was that we had to remove a very large and hard to desolder through hole part on our PCBs, which not only cost money, but also a lot of time. This was luckily discovered before the product shipped, but only by chance to be honest, since half the shipment had parts made with the new tooling, half with the old tooling, the latter which worked as expected. How do catch something like that without testing every single part? That's simply not doable and no company does that unless it's medical equipment.

 

[Ferrum Master]

And where are you going to fit that connector in the space they placed the fan hub in?

Just solder it dead on the PCB itself and pour some epoxy over it, don't overcomplicate things... There are better connectors out there also. Even with the sata you can hook it on the side and everything will fit fine.

I wonder, what's with that voltage rating you're so keen on, yeah as rating it will not spark over the other pin and the plastic dielectric properties are enough for mains...

I've said in my first post, that when fans will spin up, the current will greatly reduced... You are talking about which current? Start or rated? Don't mash up my words. I am talking about start. The device fails just because of the excess loads.

My fans do have a proper datasheet, well, my fault... my fans are the worst because of that... bad boys...

Well you can push pull if using radiators, so the maximum case FAN amount is not only 5. Working well is the wishful thinking Gigabyte had ordering their recent hot PSU's too... designing electronics for PC is not easy, as the amount of peripherals is huge, and you have to consider everything. It ain't some closed system like router who you power on and forget after you bought it. PC's are intended to be assembled with various configurations. It ain't designed to work with 9 devices safely, because it is a dumb splitter, way too dumb, you say 5, yeah fine, then it will work with most fans, but If you can assemble a combo with a pump that could cause meltdown, back to the drawing board.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Just solder it dead on the PCB itself and pour some epoxy over it, don't overcomplicate things... There are better connectors out there also. Even with the sata you can hook it on the side and everything will fit fine.

I wonder, what's with that voltage rating you're so keen on, yeah as rating it will not spark over the other pin and the plastic dielectric properties are enough for mains...

I've said in my first post, that when fans will spin up, the current will greatly reduced... You are talking about which current? Start or rated? Don't mash up my words. I am talking about start. The device fails just because of the excess loads.

My fans do have a proper datasheet, well, my fault... my fans are the worst because of that... bad boys...

Well you can push pull if using radiators, so the maximum case FAN amount is not only 5. Working well is the wishful thinking Gigabyte had ordering their recent hot PSU's too... designing electronics for PC is not easy, as the amount of peripherals is huge, and you have to consider everything. It ain't some closed system like router who you power on and forget after you bought it. PC's are intended to be assembled with various configurations. It ain't designed to work with 9 devices safely, because it is a dumb splitter, way too dumb, you say 5, yeah fine, then it will work with most fans, but If you can assemble a combo with a pump that could cause meltdown, back to the drawing board.

Did you even read the datasheet you supplied? Most of those fans never even exceed 350mA at startup as you like to put it. In fact, when in use, they seem to be average at less than 100mA each and only one exceeds that. You're making a making a mountain out of a molehill. And I'm well aware the startup power can be an issue, as I've run into this in a project I made, since my supplier decided to short change me and swapped a couple of capacitors out. You're also the one making claims here, so the burden of proof is on you so to say. I think you'll find it hard to prove that a lot of fans exceed 350mA at start. This is because most things in a PC are produced to meet standars, so we don't end up with fried bits of motherboard.

No shit dude, but you clearly know everything about me and my background, so you also ought to know I spent over a decade working as a tech reviewer and writer, so yeah, I might know a thing or two about PCs too...
And please don't put words in my mouth, I NEVER said it was only good for five fans, that's something you just made up.
I'm saying it's good enough for what it was designed to do if you use to spec hardware. That there are outliers is really hard to account for when you make a product.
Your example is pretty much like making a USB device that draws 600mA of power, even though the USB spec is limited to 500mA, yet you expect it to work when you plug it in to any USB port.
Also, it would seem most, if not all AIO pumps use less than 1A and most of them aren't even powered from the 12V fan connector, so again, I don't really see the issue here.

If you want to complain, take it up with Fractal Design, I don't work there and I can't fix your giant problem that is likely to affect you and five other people, if you buy this case and use all the headers on a the fan controller despite claiming it won't work.

 

[Bomby569]

Well, that's not quite what happened.
They obviously had someone that was supposed to do QA/QC, but who didn't do their job properly.
Ever worked with someone that doesn't care? I have and that's when issues happen.
So what you're saying is that no company in the world that makes products in the PRC right now, should ship anything?
As everyone's in the same boat right now and have been for quite some time.

This issue would at most have made your fans to short out, we're not talking a mains power issue here, unlike the recent Gigabyte issue that could have caused much much bigger problems.

I just love how everyone that has never worked in the manufacturing industry has ideas on how things should've been done here. We're in a bit of an unusual situation right now and under normal circumstances, if you know what you're doing, which I'm pretty sure the people at Fractal Design do after all these years, you have your own people in the factory to check on production.
Sure, things can still happen, but it's far less likely. I've had to stop the production of products in the past, as screwups happened. In one specific case, the engineer didn't listen and decided to cut some corners, because it was easier that way. In another case, the product designer "knew best" and didn't listen and I had to find a workaround. This is why you need to have multiple people involved.

It's really not an easy business to be in, as you rely on multiple suppliers and everyone has to do their job correct, or there can be a problem. At one point, a supplier changed their tooling, but didn't actually check the output of the new tooling, which meant that the final product wasn't according to spec. The outcome of that, was that we had to remove a very large and hard to desolder through hole part on our PCBs, which not only cost money, but also a lot of time. This was luckily discovered before the product shipped, but only by chance to be honest, since half the shipment had parts made with the new tooling, half with the old tooling, the latter which worked as expected. How do catch something like that without testing every single part? That's simply not doable and no company does that unless it's medical equipment.

look if this was the nzxt case or the psu that we found out months later, that would be one thing, but this case is so new, these cases happened almost immediately and not just to one person, and considering how expensive it is, it's not exactly selling hundreds in a couple of days. I just got to conclude that QC was simply not done. Who the responsibility is it's irrelevant, just like with the NZXT or Gigabyte cases, they put their name, they are the ones we trust, they should be the ones responsible for doing it.
Millions of companies do their manufacturing in China that doesn't take their responsibility.

I don't need to be a QC expert to have my own opinion.

 

[DonKnotts]

Sure, people have different needs, but I'd say 50%+ of stuff made in the PRC is our poor quality.

I'd say it's even higher once you start to buy things that don't have major brand names to copy or compete with. The big brand names have their own QC standards in place at the end of the production line to loosely follow or copy. Last week I bought two small 30 watt switching power supplies for some LED string lights on my patio and one was DOA. And I just had to arrange the RMA for both heavy duty LFP batteries I bought for a pair of e-bikes because the 10ga negative leads were so corroded inside the insulation that wire was stiff and lumpy. Unfortunately there are some things that do not have manufacturers in North America, Europe or the other Asian nations as an option, so you're stuck with the quality gamble.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Unfortunately there are some things that do not have manufacturers in North America, Europe or the other Asian nations as an option, so you're stuck with the quality gamble.

Yeah, that part is a bummer. We've become way to reliant on a single nation to produce so much stuff that there's no second source. Hopefully the current situation will make changes to where things are manufactured.
Some things have already been slowly moving to Vietnam and India, some of that has been accelerated now, but it's not an easy thing to do. It's not just the assembly that needs to be done somewhere, but you need suppliers of all the parts too. But "we" should've known better than putting all the eggs in one basket.

 

[Tardian]

As someone who worked as a senior Quality Manager who @ 8 years for a really large entity, I can provide some insight based on my own experience.

What I found was that when policies and procedures were well designed and easy to understand and implement/follow and they were well known by those who need to know then quality outcomes were usually high. Another factor is that you need the right people. Square pegs in round holes are a recipe for disaster. Recruiting the right people at all levels is crucial. A chain is only as good as its weakest link.

Quality needs to be measured in real-time and reported in a timely fashion truthfully without fear or favor. Too many managers have a shoot the messenger policy, and only want to hear good news.

You need your absolutely best people to measure quality. They need the courage of a lion, attention to detail, understand the strategic view, and work harder than anyone else on what is a thankless task.

The reward for good work is more work. A quality manager must have expertise in nearly everything the organization does or gets involved in. Mining data for quality requires imagination and determination.

What I did was to establish a network of experts who would provide instant phone a friend advice. Even Polymaths can't know everything to the detail required to solve some problems.

A Quality Manager must be perceived as perfect and omniscient. I believe it can be amongst the hardest jobs in the world

Despite all the above neither people nor technology is perfect and things just go wrong. When they do it is vital they are detected earlier and rectified.

Enthusiasts of certain products regard quick recall of defective products as a sign that their faith in that product is well deserved. In some circumstances, this mounts virtue signaling.

My personal take is that BITD Rolls Royce had the right idea (this I don't believe to be an urban myth) that when one of their cars failed to proceed, a flatbed towtruck would be despatched and the RR would be covered in canvas and returned to the service center. The owner of the car was not inconvenienced.

Given there were only four cases involved I would have sent staff to those people who identified the problem given them a bespoke solution and obtained an NDA.

I would then have contacted directly retailers of the product and advised them about the problem, which only impacts a small percentage of users, and updated instruction both in the packaging and on the internet.

Nicer, improved, less copy & paste, humbler