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.