Power Supply question...

[Becks2k]

I've got this goal of a really quiet computer, but the powersupply doesn't seem to get what I'm trying to do and is quite loud. I replaced the fan in it with a 21dba panaflo, but its still a little loud. The next step would be a 12dba papst fan. Problem with this is that the powersupply most likely would run too hot. What exactly would happen if a powersupply runs too hot for too long?

I'm figuring it'll die sooner or later, but how long? I don't need it to last 6 years or whatever it's made to, I'll spend $80 a year to have a quiet computer. I'm more concerned with what happens to the rest of my computer.

Is a powersupply dying a progressive thing? Will it start giving out funky voltages until they are too far outa spec that the computer crashes? Or is it a more sudden then and it fries the entire computer?

Bout a year ago we were playing with my dads stereo and the sub's amp fried. The sub was fine, brought the amp in and they told us it was fried and it'd be cheaper to buy a new one and we did and the sub still works great (yay velodyne!).

What happens if a powersupply doens't have enough cooling (it has some tho)? What are the chances of the computer getting fried .




BTW I posted this in Highly Technical cause I doubt I'll get an answer I like in teh cases forum and I'm sure some of you know how this works and has some idea what would happen.

 

[Bozz]

It simply depends on what level of underengineering went into the power supply. These days almost every power supply is quite badly underengineered that costs under about $35 which means protection circuits are not employed to prevent an overvoltage on the output. It really does depend what fails, the most likely thing to fail is the chopper transistor since that dissipates the most heat and is attached to the heatsink which the fan keeps cool.

So the long and the short of it is the question is completely unanswerable. I have seen blown power supplies sometimes take out everything they are plugged into. Out of all the blown power supplies that have done this I would say 150 power supplies fail without damage to anything else to one power supply taking everything with it. Mind you it's all ATX power supplies, in the days of AT power supplies there usually was a lot better R&D because they were not constrained to people being such tight pricks with their money and demanding the cheapest of everything. Quality has fallen very much.

 

[boran]

hmmh, and what about enermax PSU's ??? cous I intend to put som pabst (26 cfm) fans into my enermax and turn those down to 7 volts when I go to sleep (will a powersupply even dissapate lower temps when I dont use my computer or does it keep working at the same level (and dissapating the same amount of heat ...)

well ... this didnt really answer yer question but I tought it would be better to ask in a similar thread than to make a new one ...

 

[blahblah99]

How about a feedback controlled fan that'll speed up when its hot and slow down when its cool?

 

[CTho9305]

I dropped a 120mm fan on top of my PSU (case open, yeah I know thats stupid) at 7V... silent and even more airflow than before. lots more dust too though