First post, by athlon-power
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The last time I made a post regarding PSUs was a while back, but I now have a refreshed fear of the ones I've been using due to my new motherboard having set me back ~US$65 and the fact that I can't get another one for a very long time if this one goes.
They are Dell power supplies, ca. 2003. I use one for my Super Socket 7 machine, and one for the Slot 1 build. These seem to be good quality power supplies, and I have taken them apart (once with the SS7 one, twice now with the Slot 1 unit) to clean them and inspect the capacitors and such inside. They have box film capacitors in there, the internals look decent, and the voltages seem stable.
I recently got two brand new Cooler Master (generic black fans, they look exactly the same as the 90's ones I was using before) fans, and mounted them with anti-vibration rubber mounts to prevent me from having to deal with screwing the fans in, because the last time I tried that it went horribly wrong enough to spew tiny metal shavings everywhere from the screw's threads hitting the hole in the case- I'll sum that to being related to my incompetence in dealing with screwing fans in.
The anti-vibration mounts work great to attach the fans to the case, and I didn't spew particulate death (at least, for my computers) into my room while trying to mount the fans this time. The issue now is that this system is nearly silent without anything but the motherboard/case fans/cpu fan plugged in, and because I also have a brand-new Slot 1 cooler with a brand-new fan on it as well, I can hear that the PSU fan is making a small amount of noise (which I couldn't hear over the old fans that made tons of noise). It's nothing major, just a very rapid sort of vibrating/ticking sound, but it reminded me of just how old that PSU really is.
I have no way of really lubricating the fan, but I can replace it if need be- at the same time, it is now starting to bother me more than it has in a while: should I really trust PSU's that are 17 years old anymore? I have ran that PSU with my other Slot 1 board and random other Slot 1 configurations for, lord, I don't know how long, maybe a year? Maybe more? The motherboard reports decent voltages, with some straying but only in the .0-.5ish range, nothing amounting to 1v or higher. I've just become exceedingly paranoid about this sort of thing since I lost my SE440BX-2 to semi-unknown causes.
I can't really afford any new power supplies at the moment, but what new PSU's are worth looking at for old computers (i.e. a gray shell instead of a black shell, and a decent 5v rail), while still being relatively cheap (no more than US$45 or so)? Or am I okay just replacing the fan with a less noisy one and continuing on?
Where am I?
