How to put your PSU on permanent Vacation

[ed2lv]

To begin with I am an innovator not a perfectionist. When I turned on my brand new DIY AMD Athlon 1500+, Shuttle AK31 I was pleased at first then I noticed the Temps were high. CPU was 40 c and the system was 32c (IDLE). This being winter and the room ambient temp was 68-70 F I was concerned that when the hot dog days of August rolled thru that a overheat condition would certainly occur. I bought extra fans. I cut out 2 spots on the bottom (heat rises) and installed 2 manual controlled 80MM fans there. I also raised the PC 3 inches from the ground. So far so good. The CPU and Sytem temps dropped 4c. I replaced the 350 Watt power supply 80MM fan with a "Smart Fan" Thermal controlled one from Thermaltake. I also routed the tachometer lead to one of the mobo's reporting socket. Again ok. The last thing I did was get curious and put another ThermalTake "Smart Fan" 80MM fan on the case backside. Two minutes later after power on and into Windows I received a warning msg from MBM5 saying that Fan#2 has reported 0 Rpm and asked me what to do. After visually confirming that each fan was spinning I ignored the msg not once but twice. The power supply unit then unconditionally shut itself off never to return. Folks if I were you I suggest you never, ever ignore these warnings! If you have the (free) Motherboard Monitor 5 program and set the minimum RPM for fans #1 & 2 then enable the alarm-heed the warning. Better yet is to power off regardless of what is running. Start with by disconnecting late extra stuff that was installed (like fans). They say hindsight is 20-20. I opened the ill fated 350 watt PS (the warantee was already voided when I replaced the original 2.76 watt 80MM fan with the 6 watt 80MM "Smart Fan") and I didnt find anything wrong. No burned parts and the fuse was still intact.
Since it would cost the same amount to fix it I just simply bought another. The moral of this story is just because it is a 350 watt PSU doesnt mean you can add "Smart" stuff at will. I guess I am real lucky that the PSU didnt take the mobo and the CPU with it.

My sys:
MAXTOP case with dead 350 watt PS (replaced with Antec 400x)
Shuttle AK31 r3.1
ThermalRight Heatsink SK6 (replaced Delta with ThermalTake Fan)
Artic Silver
AMD Athlon XP1500+ (not OC'd)
Leadtek GF2 MX200
Crucial 256MB DDR
Maxtor 30GB IDE ATA-66
Windows 98 (the first version)
MBM5 (The free mobo monitoring temps etc.)
Rain (free program that gets your CPU from full load to IDLE fastest)
2 Enermax 80MM adjustable fans mounted on inside BOTTOM case

 

[WyrmMaster]

WOW, that sucks. Never heard of that happening before.

 

[donny_paycheck]

The tach lead on a lot of PSU fans isn't a good way to monitor the fan's RPMs. Sometimes it reports 0 and other times it reports 100,000+ RPMs to the MBM program. I never use it for this reason. My case has good cooling so I don't need the PSU fan for that and PSUs are pretty resilient to overheating. I'm not too worried about it, but like you said...don't trust the tach readings.

 

[Hotsauce]

I know this is a late reply,,,but what kind of psu did you burn? What was the name? I'm curious because of recent problems with a certain psu.

 

[Yodums]

That's scary, I wouldn't like to replace it with smart fans, I would go full out Sunons I wouldn't like them throttling up and down, odd thing is it died..


Yodums

 

[ed2lv]

The brand name of that PS I slew was "Q Max". You can get a picture of it by surfing over to newegg.com, click "Catalog", "shop by brand" then scroll down to "MAXTOP". Click it and When you get the listings look for MAXTOP CSX-147 (any) with the 350 watt power supply.
Inside the box there is a "See it"(in blue). Just click on it and there are a few images to go through.
Again I stress it was my fault! Too many devices or 1 too many high powered devices. I assumed that 350 watts was more than enough. This wasnt a "Smart" idea.