Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
By U3 Sat May 25, 2013 11:41 pm
Hi guys,
After all this time I've finally got round to changing the fan and replacing the noisy hard drive.

I am abit confused though..
This might sound abit stupid, but which direction do you guys mount the new fan to the unit??
I just took off the old fan now and noticed that its mounted so that the air flow direction actually goes outward, NOT drawing air into the unit.
(The arrow on the old fan was pointing outward)
I have heard of people doing this in computer cases to draw the warm air out but that's usually with another fan installed pumping air in.?.?

Also, this fan comes with a 4 pin Molex power adapter.
Would it be safe to connect this to the same connection as the internal hard disk and share its power using a Molex double adapter?
I don't want to blow this thing up or anything!

Thanks
By MPCdawk Sun May 26, 2013 2:49 am
I think you are going in another direction with the fan you want to put in.

Can I just confirm that the specs of your new fan are a match to the old one on current draw, air flow and operating voltage?

The fan is positioned behind the power supply which is the main thing that needs cooling; it will get hot enough to burn skin and is designed to get hot, so just having the hot air pulled away from it is enough cooling. The MPC casing is not airtight so you get some outside air coming into it and then sucked out the back by the fan.

Ideally you should replace the fan with something close and reuse the PCB connector on the old fan. The extra wires on your new fan is probably for speed control and feedback to a microprocessor to vary the speed according to heat. The fan should still be able to operate as a single speed fan if you use the right pair of wires.
By U3 Sun May 26, 2013 12:23 pm
Hello MPCdawk, thanks for the reply.
Yeah its all good i made sure the fan's specs were close enough with the original, check it out!:
http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=48&lng=en

MPCdawk wrote:The fan is positioned behind the power supply which is the main thing that needs cooling; it will get hot enough to burn skin and is designed to get hot, so just having the hot air pulled away from it is enough cooling. The MPC casing is not airtight so you get some outside air coming into it and then sucked out the back by the fan.

Interesting.. Yeah i noticed the power supply being located right behind the fan.
I wonder why the 4000 is the only mpc needing a fan though? Is the power supply THAT much bigger than the rest needing its own fan?
MPCdawk wrote:Ideally you should replace the fan with something close and reuse the PCB connector on the old fan. The extra wires on your new fan is probably for speed control and feedback to a microprocessor to vary the speed according to heat. The fan should still be able to operate as a single speed fan if you use the right pair of wires.

Yeah im going to be using the "Low Noise Adapter" it came with. Its going to bring the noise down more and still pump 14 cfm (close enough) compared to the factory fans 15.5 cfm.
Im going to use the inlcuded 4:3 pin adapter to plug into the same IDE HARD drives power source. (Instead of splicing wires/soldering etc) Easier..
Just wanted to make sure its safe doing it from there.
Last edited by U3 on Wed May 29, 2013 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By U3 Wed May 29, 2013 7:24 pm
Ok just an update/what i noticed/warning to everyone:

1) There is a sticker on the back of the 4000 "WARNING:SHOCK HAZARD-DO NOT OPEN! ". Take that advice when its powered on pls.
During the install i put my hand in to have a feel of the airflow inside the unit. My finger/hand lightly brushed past a part of the powersupply.. Its a weird feeling, hard to explain but its like everything paused for 1 second and then all of a sudden i felt the shock burst! (the muscle is still abit tender in my hand which got jolted)
If both my hands were clasped together it would have been way more dangerous.
I can hear you guys laughing in the back!

2) - This Fan is quieter than the factory fan (but still loud!) when used without any speed adapters @ 19.3 dbs
- With the "Low Noise adapter" connected, @ 14.5 dbs although it is MUCH quieter (whisper quiet), you can still hear it.
- With the "Ultra Low Noise adapter" connected, @ 8.2 dbs its inaudible, if i put my ear to the fan i can hear it that way..
I left the "ULNA" plugged in, I realize its airflow is only 10 cfm compared to the factory 15.5 cfm but theres no way i can handle that noise. Plus from leaving the unit on for a while and opening the hood i noticed it wasnt as warm as i expected it to be.

(If anybody has a completely DEAD silent fan on here flowing more than 10 cfm please post up what you have)

3) I didnt end up plugging the 4:3 pin adapter that came with the fan into the double molex apapter --> into old IDE hard disk molex power cable . The double adapter only had one Male molex connection on it (needed one more).
Just connected the usual way - stripped the black and red wires on new fan/4000 and joined them.

4) The IDE -> CF adapter works good. I re-loaded all my Samples/Programs into folders all beautifully using Akaisys - lifesaving program, it would have been alot of work/time doing it from the 4000's RAM --> Save to DISK feature.
Also i dont know why but once i formatted the CF card it instantly took 2 GB's off the card for some reason..??

U3
By U3 Wed May 29, 2013 7:33 pm
flowdesigner wrote:can you change power supply and skip the fan?

I doubt it..
User avatar
By Ian Canefire Wed May 29, 2013 8:20 pm
Man, I am not laughing at all. I am always fooling around inside my MPC. It is always unplugged though. Glad to actually know that it packs a punch. That is good info.

Cheers,
ian

PS How much was the compact flash set up?
By Clint Wed May 29, 2013 10:40 pm
Ian Canefire wrote:I am not laughing.


+1

Shaking my head though :WTF:

What was the capacity of your CF card before you formatted it, and how did you format it?
User avatar
By Coz Wed May 29, 2013 11:00 pm
U3 wrote:I was, but in the end i just went down the Compact Flash route. (via IDE->CF Adapter):
http://www.addonics.com/products/adidecf.php



CF cards aren't big enough to fit everything on a single card for my purposes. I'll be going SSD when funds permit.

Bit of a wake up call with the shock! You're in Feline's exclusive "I nearly croaked it fixing my MPC but lived to tell the tale" club. :mrgreen:
User avatar
By JUKE 179r Thu May 30, 2013 12:57 am
U3 wrote:(If anybody has a completely DEAD silent fan on here flowing more than 10 cfm please post up what you have)

In my MV I replaced the louder stock fan with a Silenx Effizio 80mm fan from Fry's Electronics... 15dbA at 32cfm.
Image
By U3 Thu May 30, 2013 6:45 pm
@ Ian Canefire & Coz: Haha it packs a punch alright! Yes i have joined Feline's exclusive club.. lol The stupid thing is that i read his post a while ago about it while researching about this mod, and promised myself that i wouldnt do the same mistake. Stupidity..
The 4000 was good to me that night.

The cost of it was $38 for the adapter and $68 for the card = $106 total (not cheap)

Im sort of regretting not going the SSD route, but at the time i was reading a few people were having problems after the install and didnt want any headaches.
My sample library is mostly drums and quite small in size. The plan is to just backup my multis and seq's to USB stick every so often. I'll see how this 'plan' goes tho..

(PS Ian- keep the videos coming, your effort is appreciated im thoroughly enjoying them!)


@ Clint: The card is only 16 GBs. I did the format inside the 4000. Tried "Full format" and "Quick Format" but it still says 14 GBs available next to "disk".
Weird huh? Oh well..


@ JUKE 179r: I tried my fan running with the Low Noise adapter @ 14.5 db and found it pretty quiet but still can clearly hear it.
Surely you can hear yours spinning @ 15db?


some install pics:
Image


Image
User avatar
By JUKE 179r Fri May 31, 2013 4:57 am
The new fan is a lot quieter than the old stock fan because I think the bearings were going bad on it. But yeah I can still hear the fan... slightly. The sound isn't loud at all to be a distraction.
User avatar
By feline1 Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:39 pm
U3 wrote:Ok just an update/what i noticed/warning to everyone:

1) There is a sticker on the back of the 4000 "WARNING:SHOCK HAZARD-DO NOT OPEN! ". Take that advice when its powered on pls.
During the install i put my hand in to have a feel of the airflow inside the unit. My finger/hand lightly brushed past a part of the powersupply.. Its a weird feeling, hard to explain but its like everything paused for 1 second and then all of a sudden i felt the shock burst! (the muscle is still abit tender in my hand which got jolted)
If both my hands were clasped together it would have been way more dangerous.
I can hear you guys laughing in the back!


Yeah, this is pretty much exactly what happen to me some years ago, when I was fitting a quieter fan in my MPC4000:
I wasn't sure which way round to connect the little power cable for the fan, to make suck in the right direction... so I had the power on so I could see what was going on and easily change the way I'd plugged the cable ...

...like you, my hand lightly brushed against the PSU board and I got a nasty big shock in my arm.
Luckily I was positioned so that this made my arm jolt itself away from the PSU, ending the shock - otherwise, let's face it, I might have died! Instead I just had a very nasty pain in my arm and was left feeling very shocked indeed.

"At least" I now know what electric shocks feel like..... (quite different from other types of pain!) ... hopefully I'll never experience one again!