Mercury Helios (TB2, TB3): Verifying Noise Sources

Created on: May 5, 2022

Problem

Occasionally customers may complain that their Helios or Helios 3 PCIe chassis is generating too much fan noise (or other types of noise) during use. It is rare that the Helios fan would be the cause of excessive noise (and in that case possibly a defective fan). More commonly, some PCIe cards have a fan attached to them — e.g. specialized video processing cards can have this (not the same thing as GPUs), but others can as well. Customers are not always aware of this fact.

Before contacting Technical Support please go through the steps below to determine the source of the noise. 

Solution

1. Quit out of any applications being used by their PCIe card, then disconnect the Helios from the host. If the card is a third party storage device eject any connected volumes from the OS.
    
2. Power off the Helios, disconnect the power cable and Thunderbolt cable, then remove cover and the PCIe card.
    
3. Plug the power cable back into the Helios and reconnect to the host, then power the device on with no card installed. (The outer case does not need to be re-affixed)
    
4. Does the same level of noise occur as before. Note that the Helios' fan is designed to run when the device is powered on and connected to an active host but it should run quiet. If you do not hear the same level of noise as before, the problem is rooted in the card being using.
   
   
5. If you still hear excessive noise please contact our Technical Support Team.