On Tuesday 27 December 2005 20:12, Piers Kittel wrote:
Even tho it's only about a year old?
A year old psu can have 4 oz of dust bunnies in it, completely blocking
any air flow. This user said there was only one fan, the one on the
cpu.
Now, I've never seen although there may well be, an example of a
fanless psu, but at 240 watts rated, & say 95% efficiency (thats being
very very charitable BTW, most are hard put to make 90%) then thats
still 12 watts of heat to get rid of by whatever means. With no fan
that assumes good radiant efficiency, and good thermal condutivity to
the outside world else something is going to get too hot to work. And
once an overheat has shut one of these things down (if its not a
catastrophic shutdown where the magic smoke comes out) then whatever
caused the shutdown is going to become ever more sensitive to over
temps, turning itself into a nuisance rather quickly.
With decent psu's being commodity items, carefull shopping will buy you
a case of 24 300 watters from the pacific rim people at less than a
$20 bill each including shipping. I usually go for the even bigger
stuffs, 450-600 watts rated because they'll have 2 fairly quiet, ball
bearing rated fans in them, often thermostaticly controlled & running
easy, and will last for many years. But they ALL will benefit from an
annual blow job administered by a 100+ psi air hose. That one point
will extend their working life by 3 to 10 times depending on how much
dust they manage to trap.
Who am I to sound like an expert when I don't even have a briefcase?
Just a semi-retired old fart who's been chasing electrons for a living
since about 1948. The last 21 years as the CE at a TV station here in
WV. Semi-retired because I'm still doing it part time.