Changing a PSU fan.

EdGey

EdGey

EdGey

Soldato
Joined
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Hello folks.

When changing a fan on a PSU, is there anything out of the ordinary that I should be aware of?

Or is it simply a case of take the old one out, shove the new one in?

Thank you.
 
The PSU contains Capacitors that can give you a very nasty shock. What I do is remove the power cable and hit the power on switch a few times, then remove the PSU and leave it for a day or two to ensure the capacitors are fully discharged. That said you could probably get away without doing this if your very careful :)
 
Ok thanks for the tip. If i suddenly stop posting after about 20 minutes you know why :D

Anything else relating to the fan that you know of?
 
EdGey said:
Ok thanks for the tip. If i suddenly stop posting after about 20 minutes you know why :D

Anything else relating to the fan that you know of?
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Your brave I would never touch anything in the PSU as it can still hold enough charge to kill you even after turning it off and unplugging it. If you must do this try and use non metallic tools to reduce the risk of conducting electricity.
 
if your missus has got any of those yellow rubber gloves for washing dishes, they will stop you getting a bad shock but put them on your hands not your head :D
 
I used to do it all the time. Just take your time, you have no reason to go anywhere near the caps anyway as monst psu fans attach to the outher cover rather tna to a bracket in the main body of the psu.

I would put some rubber on though just to be safe, but maybe that's me :O
 
Done, and still alive!

Turns out that the original fan was actually solderd onto the PSU board. Also, the original fan had only 2 wires. All of my possible replacement fans had 3 wires.

In the end I simply run the cable out of the power supply and plugged it into the motherboard. Cheating, but it works :)
 
The yellow wire is just a tach wire that reports how fast the fan is going. I soldered my replacement fan's red and black wire to the existing wiring and routed the yellow cable out to my motherboard so I could watch it's speed. The psu still controls the fan in this instance whereas wiring all 3 wires to motherboard removes the psu from control and puts you in charge.

Provided the psu gets enough airflow so as not to overheat then all should be fine whichever way.
 
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Thats interesting. I did actually attempt soldering a fan in but had no luck and came to the conclusion it must have been because of the yellow wire which I had not included.

I cant think of what else could have been wrong :confused:

The current set up is working ok though, no overheating etc so I think I'll just leave it for now.
 
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I did actually attempt soldering a fan in but had no luck and came to the conclusion it must have been because of the yellow wire which I had not included.
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At startup the PSU could be sending something like 4v to the fan, which would be fine for a 2,500rpm screamer fan you took out but could be insufficient for a lower speed fan, which is what people usually replace PSU fans with. It's generally not a good idea to run PSUs passive unless they are designed to be run as such.

I erred on the side of caution and used a 1600rpm S-flex which have low starting voltage so my PSU starts at about 600rpm rising with my 170W idle load to around 1000rpm and then onto 1200 or so under load. I get a 4 or 5 degree difference between intake and exhaust with this speed so I think it's ok. My PSU is OCZ 600W Stealth(yeah right)Xstream with a 2000 ish stock fan that had deveoped a nasty tick.
 
Hmm, the original fan was surprisingly a Yate Loon.

I happend to have an old Yate Loon lying around so I figured it would be a good idea to replace it with the same fan. (The reason for the change is that the original fan had developed a clicking noise and was on its way out).

Having said that, they may have been different RPM's so thats possibly the reason.

Anyway, thanks for the support everyone :)
 
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