Are fans from old PSUs any good?

YES! A majority of them are Nidec fans, but every five power supplies or so you'll find a really nice fan. For instance, I found a Panaflo 08A12M in an old AT PSU I had. This fan is from a five year old PSU, but the fan is now being sold as the "Panaflo 80mm Hydro Wave Bearing Fan Medium Volume" at casecooler.com. I plan to swap my current front case fan with this one today. The only differance between this fan and the one being sold online is the lable color. This one has a yellow one, while current ones have grey.

Another fan I've found is an Archer 273-243B, which I cannot seem to find any info about online. It's a nice fan, and is just as nice as the Panaflo I have at the top of my case. I'll have to look up the model of that fan when I pull my case out to replace front fans.

C.P.

Hey man you found that Archer from my tool box at work!


I think archer is one of Rat Shackz old brands, but i could be wrong. That fan is quite nice though, considering its age.

I've found a few mechtronics fans in some old 150Watt PSUs that are wonderful in terms of noise. Not the most powerful though.

Having constantly upgraded PSUs or getting new cases to fit new motherboards since the 286 era, I had a lot of old powersupplies laying around. I've always yanked them out and spliced them in with my newer systems. Needless to say, my northbridge is being cooled by an old 250watt PSU fan.. (sticker just DONOTREMOVE).. heh.. cable length on those bastids is limited for the most part, however.

-Frank

Yes, the wires *are* short, but that's easilly fixable. Just crimp some longer wires to it and put a connector at the end. Or, you can do what I do and solder longer wires on, and then cover them with shrink tubing or electrical tape. I use connectors from old power LED leads from old front case panels from old cases. When done correctly, it all comes out nice .

C.P.

I was at the scrap yard getting some more copper for my waterblocks and low and behold two giant bins full of old 266 school comps, i went to town for about an hour pullin fans outa the psus. Very fun, and i got some nice fans.

i would have taken the whole lot - get them folding

Only recovered raw sounding Nidec howlers so far... not of much use. I even located a 20mm fan though, beit from a Plextor 8220 CDRW... a Nidec as well.

Ahh, I wish we had a scrap yard like that here. I'd be there once a week rummaging around for things like that .

The local community college keeps a collection of older computers. But they keep tabs on them, so you can't just go snaggle like 20 Pentium 120's or nothing like that... wish I could... that'd be a lot of power..

-Frank

I have some old PSUs I've been meaning to get fans out of. Always fun to salvage old comptuer parts.

I just pulled another one of those Panaflo fans from an old NEC 7022 Pentium 133 that I was parting out so I could use the case for something else. Looks like they arn't just in the power supplies .