Power Supply Fan Fix

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tlowr4

tlowr4

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So here's the story:

I literally (20 mins ago) got home from a mates place. He had a ton of old crud computer parts he was throwing out. It was a case of "Take what you want, the rest will end up going to the tip". So I nabbed what I could. Most of it's old stuff, fair enough since that's what I mainly play with. However, somehow in the mix, there was a 650W AITO PSU. I walked to it like a zombie, chucked it in the pile, and made off with my profits.

I got it home and sorted out the stuff. It's a bit dusty, not half as bad as most the stuff that's there, but dusty nonetheless. I just blew my breath into the fan to make it spin, hoping to move it around and get some dust out (no canned air at present, but I'm gonna get some tomorrow). No go. I wondered why, so I unscrewed the fan grill (what looks to be 120mm) and spun the fan with my finger.

Well I've seen some bad fans in my day, but this takes the cake. No give it in whatsoever. Clearly needs cleaning out and the bearing oiled. Now ordinarily I'd just chuck it, as it's not worth effing around with to get going. But this is a bloody good PSU (for me), and I need it for my new Folding@Home rig (since it's got two 6 pin connectors, 8 pin cpu, all that jazz). Even so, I'm not made of dollars, so this is more than perfect and I'd like to try and save it.

Now before you all keyboard mash about how I shouldn't be screwing with power supplies, I know, it's risky buisness. But my logic is that this thing hasn't seen power in a good year or so, and it's just the fan, not like I'm replacing capacitors and all that.

I thought of ripping out the fan, cutting the fan cables (and putting insulation tape around them so they don't short out) and putting in another 120mm fan that runs of Molex. It would require a bit of surgery, but as long as I don't have to dice it to complete bits I should be good.

Any thoughts? And sorry for the long winded post, I felt it deemed necessary to tell my life story while I was at it. :p

EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention. It dosn't seem to be one of those fans where you can just pop off the blades, or else this thread would be essentially useless. Was the first thing I tried but I don't want to snap it.
 
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Well it depends on the cables it uses.

All PSU fans I have seen just have a red and a black wire soldered to the board.
So if you grab a Molex powered fan(found on cheap cases) you could cut the molex connection off and solder it to the board or cut both wires and join with some solder and cover with electrical tape.
And you will never see a fan with removable blades in a PSU.

Another option is to remove the fan then mount a fan on the outside of it to blow in but make it powered from a molex.

Kinda like this
ultrapower_blower.jpg
 
Some PSUs have fans with a 2 pin plug on the end. If your one has one of these plugs, I could send you 120mm working fan out of one of my many PSUs.
 
Ah exelent. Well I jumpered the 24pin, and turned the psu on. The fan spun really slowly and made a rattling noise. So I took the liberty and ripped it open. My life fell down before itself, and crashed.

The fan is a 2 pin plug. Horray! There is rusty gunk everywhere from two bulging and leaking capacitors. Boo!

Bloody idiot that owned this before I did obviously didn't have the common sense to realise when your PSU starts making mad rattling noises that something is obviously wrong....

Grrrrr. This is a real bugger. It was such a good find and now I've gotta bin it. :banghead:
 
tlowr4
Ah exelent. Well I jumpered the 24pin, and turned the psu on. The fan spun really slowly and made a rattling noise. So I took the liberty and ripped it open. My life fell down before itself, and crashed.

The fan is a 2 pin plug. Horray! There is rusty gunk everywhere from two bulging and leaking capacitors. Boo!

Bloody idiot that owned this before I did obviously didn't have the common sense to realise when your PSU starts making mad rattling noises that something is obviously wrong....

Grrrrr. This is a real bugger. It was such a good find and now I've gotta bin it. :banghead:
Click to expand...

Maybe you could salvage the connectors on it and make some 6 and 8-pin adapters for another PSU?
 
Na. You just throw it out or go to your nearest recycling center(quite easy in the US, many electronic stores are required to recycle something). It ain't worth even touching now that some capacitors are blown.
 
They're not blown. They're not even bluging much. Just a little. The main issue is that there's electrolyte fluid over a few resistors, so I think it's a bin job. So sad, considering it was free.

I could clean it up but I guess everyone would yell at me for screwing too much with PSU's :p

EDIT: I will cut the connectors off the end and pinch the wires and sleeveing. Might come in handy for something.
 
You can splice the red/black wires together with a working fan to make it work. Have done it several times. Usually at my work if we get bad PSUs, but the fans are still good we take out the fans.

What color is the fluid on the caps? If it's white then that's normal to see, if it looks like acid then it's gone bad.

I think using the phrase "Risky Business" is a little timid. You touch one of the big caps in there and your going to be in bad shape if it's holding a charge. BAD SHAPE. I know you said you knew, but just clarifying.
 
Electrolyte fluid (I'm sure you know what it looks like, but it's brown) anywhere but in the caps means they're blown, as does even the slightest bit of bulging, they may still work but they won't hold as much charge as they're supposed to, and are therefore as good as dead as they still need to be replaced. Semantics, yes, but still!
 
I always have a bit of a chuckle to myself when the dangers of caps are discussed in this sub-forum. All comes down to experience I suppose.

Cheers Shaun.
 
Just toss the damned thing. Save up a couple bucks and buy a regular decent power supply from a company you've actually heard of.
 
^ Bucks I don't have to throw, unfortunatly. You havn't seen how tight we are for dollars, and in addition to that getting 'mummy to buy all my stuff!!1! :dopey:' isn't like me. I like to work for my stuff and with school and other assorted teenage life-or-death issues, I wouldn't have time.

It is electrolite fluid, after further inspection it seems the two bulged caps have leaked down the bottom near the PCB. Again, I could clean it up and replace the caps, but I assume everyone would not like it that I'm screwing with power supplies. Honestly I don't really, just being a sorry little bugger and not wanting to throw it out :lol:
 
Give it to your daddy if you can not throw it out and he will do it for you.
If you have if you are not a trained sparkie do not even think about replacing the caps cause you could start a fire.
 
^ Got no daddy. :lol:

I've replaced caps on smaller objects and stuff, not a PSU. I'll bin it. Just being a childish wimp about it. Love me mah free hardware.

There is a lecky I know around town, I might ask him about it. Last chance, if that fails I'll man up and chuck it.
 
If you want a cheap FAH PC go to centrelink.
They have old PCs for about $75 that can do it for you.
Just get 2 and boom a nice duel FAH set up.
 
Yeah, I've been looking around. I've got an 8600GT which I was going to use and a mate has an old Core 2 Quad he was going to part with if I got down on my knees and licked his feet. Then slowly upgrade it over time, and once I have dollars.

Funny thing is, there's a centerlink behind my house. We live next door XD I'll go over on Monday and see what they've got. Are the old crap pentium stuff, or are they actually relatively decent system?
 
tlowr4
Yeah, I've been looking around. I've got an 8600GT which I was going to use and a mate has an old Core 2 Quad he was going to part with if I got down on my knees and licked his feet. Then slowly upgrade it over time, and once I have dollars.

Funny thing is, there's a centerlink behind my house. We live next door XD I'll go over on Monday and see what they've got. Are the old crap pentium stuff, or are they actually relatively decent system?
Click to expand...

I have a 450W PSU sitting around here you could have. It doesn't have any SATA or 6/8-pin connectors but that can be fixed by using adapters.
 

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