Survival? PSU w/o fan.

[DukeP]

Just bought a secondhand computer (15$).

It had an Aopen 145W psu in it, with a topmounted fan.

My thoughts where to use this to drive my via sepia board (all in one board, cpu, gpu, 2xlan etc).
The board and HD and DvDrom is expected to have a powerrequirement around 35Watt max, 18Watt idle.

How much risc am i pulling, by disabling the fan on the PSU?

~~DukeP~~

[Umfriend]

Don't know. With my XP 1800+, 1 SCSI 15K and 2 7.2K IDE drives and 1 DVD writer and a R9600 (fanless) I have only one fan, the CPU fan. All else is disabled, including the fan on my 350W PSU

It gets pleasantly warm. Ambient room is seldom over 21 C and it hardly ever does a lot though.

[DukeP]

THAT sounds encouraging!

~~DukeP~~

[Umfriend]

It's the PSU in a A-open A-600B or soemthing, the case that has lots of room for lots of drives. I guess th ethin steel also allows heat to dissapate, and there is hardly any obstruction in the box. Fact is, I don't know WHY it works and therfore not whether it shoudl say anything about your situation. The feeling I have is that as long as power consumption falls well below the capacity of the PSU, no problem should arise. But I am a nitiwit with these kind of things.

[SpiralDragon]

cheesh.... then i must be going overboard with 7fans in my sys... including psu and cpu

[Fat Tone]

How hot is the exhaust air from that PSU? If its cool you may be safe...if hot then perhaps not.

T.

[gt40]

I've seen countless PSU fans failed from being in dirty environments - in all cases (no pun intended) the computer kept going without problem.
The cases got warm but problems only occured when the CPU fan failed as well.

[az]

Just to be sure, you could run the PSU outside of the case, thus not heating the case (and PSU) up that much.

AZ

[DukeP]

I think I would strip the PSU down and let it run naked - then make airholes just above it.

Im making a custom case for the system (18x24x12cm).
The target prise is around 200$

~~DukeP~~

[Jon P. Inghram]

If you're making a custom case you could mount the PSU verticaly so that convection helps cool it. If you put a vent hole on the top of the case I'd put a filter of some sort on it though just to keep anything from falling into the PSU though.

[a_h]

A 145W psu might not make any problems passivly cooled, there are several 100W psus available that are for labtop or epia use and designed as external, passively cooled psus.

Considering the efficency, I'd say it shouldn't produce more than ~42W of heat, which is rather low. However it's possible that some single components get very hot due to money saving design, so a failure is possible though.

Besides: don't make the mistake and think only because it's driven way below the max output, it's secure. That's wrong. Basically the heat generation stays about the same, only the efficency decreases.

The life of electronical components (capacitors!) gets cut in half when the temperature is raised by 10°C.

Why not put a low rpm fan in it, just to be sure? Greets, Hannes

[DukeP]

Thanks for the advice, Hannes.

I might but a low rpm 12cm fan inside the case, just to "stir things up". Ill look into the "heat of the matter" with our heat gun at the lab. That ought to tell me if something is getting hotter than good.

~~DukeP~~

[Umfriend]

How hot is the exhaust air from that PSU? If its cool you may be safe...if hot then perhaps not.

If this was directed at me, the exhaust air is pleasantly warm.

I need to kick out the 15K HD and lose the SCSI card as well to get it quieter and emptier, but I hate re-installing things again. I do have the 2nd IDE drive powered though so it would even lower power consupmtion when I take those out. Then I need to isloate the case wrt sound to get it really quiet. Then I'll decide I did not need that big a case anyway and on and on it goes.

I used to like this stuff but nowadays I just find toying around a waste of time..