PSU Fan Question

Post by **Illuminati** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 11:54 am

If you haven't seen the project my wife and I are working on, check out this thread to see how we are making a monitor into a fish tank:
http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=1479

We are going to be talking about lighting and electrical stuff this weekend. We got an old pre-ATX PSU donated to us by a neighbor, but the 80mm fan is not spinning. Since this PSU is only going to be powering 2 (a max of 4 in the future) four inch cold-cathode tube lights, will there be enough heat generated to require a fan? I'm not real familiar about how PSU's actually work... so I don't know if they generate the same ammount of heat no matter if they are idle or a comp is at max load.

Thanks!

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 1:58 pm

open it up and put a new 80mm fan in it. Should be pretty quick and easy. I got a half dozen or so over here if you need one.

Post by **Illuminati** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 2:56 pm

Ya, I have extra fans around here too I can use, but I was actually more interested in if it was needed. Because we'll already have a little noise from the air pump and was wondering if I could leave out the fan noise.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 3:56 pm

hell just give it a try...

Post by **Illuminati** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:02 pm

Ya, I did. So when the PSU is pluged in, but the attached power switch is off, the fan is spinning at such a low RPM, it is inaudible. When the PSU senses that it is drawing power, the RPMs speed up and it sounds just like one of your case fans. So there is some noise, but no more than expected.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:28 pm

genneraly its not a good idea to run a psu with out a fan, even when there is no load on the psu its self there is heat generated by the electical componants. if you can put it somewhere where it has good ventilation and the air will move through on its own then it might be ok.