how warm should psus get (<20% load) +evga noise???

slim01

slim01

slim01

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Hey guys I have a £200 odd quid evga platinum p2 850w and have noticed even in eco mode the fan spins up every 5mins (for about 30 secs) and can clearly be heard above all my other fans at about 900rpm.
Its not loud... but loud enough for me to think "ooh thats my psu fan turning on again" every damn 5 mins. I'm maybe more ocd about fan noise than most (when not gaming).

This is quite annoying, esp after paying £200 to "upgrade" but it got me thinking - Why is the unit even getting hot? It does this idling in windows.
pc must be using 100w at most? My last psu, corsair rm650x i never heard, and not even sure the fan EVER turned on as no dust after several years????????

the unit gets very hot to touch also, and i dont remember my rmx doing this. again, why so hot at <20% load? is that even normal?

i got the psu as johny guru said it was amazing and top tier... not convinced yet tbh. surely a £200+ unit should have a variable rpm fan of decent quality?
 
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Not had the models where the fan spins up only at certain temps. I had the fans always on at (auto variable supposedly) low (Corsair HX650W Bronze, 2011), manual-variable (Vantec Stealth 520W, 2002-2003), or non-fan models (Seasonic Fanless 700W). But I have read that certain models sometimes have their sensor malfunctioninig or blocked and then causing their fans to spin up often or a lot more than they should. Although that won't explain why you can feel the heat off the case of the PSU.

My Corsair always spun low speed, but the fan degraded over time and became fairly loud. The Vantec is nothing to write home about as it was 40mm fans and 80mm fans, so was loud no matter what setting it was on. And my fanless, well. It's fanless. :p

However, I can tell you that my Corsair when powering a fairly hefty system was only barely warm to the touch even when the rest of the system was running a lot hotter and so helped trap the heat on the PSU case. The Vantec was in a generation when you'd be hard pressed to get it stressed to a stage where you can feel warm. And the Fanless, well, it's supposed to run warm, but even the PSU case isn't even warm in my case; I have temperature probe sensors littered around the place, and the PSU is passively venting warm air that barely breaches 36C at full load, which at best feels a tiny bit cooler for human touch.

So I think you might have got a dud there, but unsure if that was designed that way for your particular model. You'll need someone who has a similar model to chime in on their experiences.
 
The fan reacts primarily to psu load, not temperature. The fan shouldnt activate with loads less than ~350w in ECO mode. If it's activating, either the psu is very warm, the fan controller in the psu is faulty, or you are seeing large enough spikes in load to start the psu fan. What does the task manager say when this is happening?:

edit:

Sidenote: the plat p2 is a superflower design and while mine was older, my old superflower leadex 650w used to get pretty warm in ECO mode, enough that i switched it off let the fan run. Despite that however, it was never warm enough in ECO to start the fan without a decent load on the PSU. It seems superflower didnt mind it running warm, but i did.
 
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My Corsair AX1600i seems to run pretty warm even with very low loads, at around 175w its reporting 44c (21c room temp), but when gaming at around 500/600w it tends to be around 54c. I have had the PSU hit 58c and that's seems to be when the fan kicks in to keep the temps down, only spins at 300rpm but its enough to bring the temps down to the very low 30s before it turns off.

Seems to be a toasty PSU this one as my previous AX860i even pulling more watts when I had SLI ran far cooler at very low loads and at very heavy loads.

This is in an Evolv X case with a 140mm fan blowing at it as well (same as my old PSU), though pretty blocked with PSU cables.
 
Odd, I have an EVGA 750w P2 with the spec in my sig and the fan almost never switches on (it is is noticeable when it does - far from silent). I don't think I've ever heard it switch on at idle, even in the summer. It used to switch on regularly while gaming when I had a Radeon Vega 56. but it almost never switches on since I changed to a Radeon RX6800, even when running a game for 1-2hrs (I don't tend to play more than that it one go and presumably the new card is below the power threshold to activate the fan).

It does sound like something is randomly drawing a lot of power in your PC or something is up with the PSU.
 
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