Is it safe to cover up the psu's vents facing inside the case?

[allanzzz]

Is it safe to cover up the psu's vents facing inside the case?

theres bout 10 vents facing inside the case, and the back is jus those honey comb things

the psu uses a 120mm fan only

so is it safe to cover up the vents facing inside the case?

i wanna cover it up cos theres alot of heat goin into the case as the fans blows hot air out the psu from both sides of the psu (inside case and outside case) and causing my system temp to rise by alot and my optical drives are hot to the touch

my case has no blowhole and i cant do it myself or wish to do it, jus wan to solve the problem as simpel as possible

 

[mooglekit]

Generally there is a reason for ventilation, I wouldn't reccomend covering the interior vents unless there is an extreme heat issue inside of your case. Even in that case, try to stick to pushing the heat generally out of the case rather than blocking it into the PSU. Overheating your PSU could lead to a whole bunch of other issues you don't want to deal with...

 

[maluckey]

I tried it with a few PSU's, and one died because of it. The vent in question was obviously (in retrospect) to avoid air stagnation near the capacitor bank at the rear. Those two caps overheated and died with a bang. One of the other PSUs had the caps start leaking near where I covered up the vents. I didn't notice till my overclock became unstable.

In short, no, don't cover the vents.....

 

[furballi]

NO!

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Absolutely not. The PSU needs a lot of air flow.

The PSU DOES NOT blow hot air into the case. Both fans are intake fans and suck air out of the case and out the back vent unless someone reversed the wiring on one of the fans.

If your system temp is too high look for another culprit. You need good air flow from the intake vent on the front of the computer case, over the mobo, and out the PSU.

/RANT
When I see a post like this I have to wonder if it isn't a fake. People can't possibly be this ignorant?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Even if you have a single fan PSU, it sucks fan up and the air makes a 90degree turn to go out the back... Don't cover ANYTHING.

 

[Jiggz]

I'm a little confuse on how your PSU is set up. Typically, PSU's with only one fan has one at the front (where you connect the power cord, and the switch is located) which is always located outside (almost outside) of the case. This fan sucks air from the PSU and blows it out of the case. In the original ATX design, the fan was designed to blow air into the PSU. But this was quickly amended since it generates a lot of heat into the case. So how's your PSU configured? If the fan is located on the front of the PSU and outside (almost outside) of the case, how could the side openings (on the PSU) affect the case temp? In fact, it should help cool the PSU and the case at the same time. Unless, of course if the fan is blowing into the case, then absolutely this will affect the case temp. Now it could be that the fan is located at the bottom or at the rear of the PSU case, and blowing into the PSU into the outside (front of PSU). If this is the case, then the side openings are disadvantage to the case temp. You can try covering the side openings one at a time and see if the case temps improve without overheating the PSU. If the PSU overheats, you can tell by feeling it's case temp. If this is the case, think about adding another fan to the front of the PSU case.

 

[maluckey]

Some of the FSP and Antec units have a fan on the bottom, and a large exhaust opening outside the case, but at the rear of the PSU case, there are also small vents. As I mentioned, they are there to prevent overheating of the caps/components at those locations. I killed a decent PSU by covering those inside vents. Just for fun I put a probe at that location after fixing the PSU. Without the vent open, and the fan set to "Low" the temp was 82 C under full load at that location. With the vent open the temp was 65 C. It isn't hard to believe that those sort of temps can seriously shorten the MTBF of the component in question.

 

[piasabird]

Some power supplies have fan controllers that make the fan speed up and slow down or even stop. So the vents might be needed.

 

[corkyg]

They wouldn't be there if they were not needed. The normal PS air flow is intake from inside the case and exhaust out the back. Could be a fan installed backwards. It would help to identify the model of PSU so we could check the designed airflow.

 

[Spike]

Another vote for no. covering vents on a case is one thing but I don't generally touch PSU vents, I figure they know better than I do.

 

[eastvillager]

no no no no no.

That fan on your ps isn't just cooling the PSU, it is venting hot air from the case.

 

[doinmybestatlast]

I rememeber having this one friend who always asked me wierd questions. I later found out he was so insecure that he always needed to have someone talk to him to reassure his own sense of worth. This could have been one of the questions he asked.