Originally posted by: Hardwick1973
OK, just seeking the voice of experience here. The PS on my wife's PC is working but the fan's dead. I can get one tomorrow (stores are closed now) but she really wants to use that PC tonight. If I ride the PS into the ground (until it fails) how much am I risking the components?
Common sense dictates caution, but if someone has strong feelings the other way then maybe it's ok...
Thoughts?
It will probably overheat, fail, and burn up, all within ten minutes.
Be the man, tell her she will "just have to wait, sorry". (I mean, really, would she drive a car with a flat tire to the grocery store and back too - thus destroying the tire and rim in the process?)
If you have to make a consolation, then let her use your PC instead. Create a new user for her, and let her have a clean desktop, or make her use the "Guest" account.
😛
Btw, if you have an available case fan, of the same size, and aren't afraid to work on computer components, then it's really not a big deal to swap it. Just unplug or cut the wires of the existing (dead) fan from the PSU, and then run the new fan's wires outside the PSU, along with the other wires. Then, again, outside the PSU, plug one of the HD molex power connectors into the fan, and then plug that into whatever device. I've done this many a time, without a problem. Just DONT FORGET to make sure that the PSU fan is properly plugged in. I think that I might have forgot once, when I was changing which case fans were plugged in, and my PSU failed in less than an hour. Thankfully, it didn't take my shiny new MSI Athlon mobo with it. (Whew!) It sure didn't smell very well though when it went, and when I later took it apart, the bottoms of the big caps inside were just black, as was the PCB near them, and they were leaking goop too.
