I’m building a Pentium 75 system for my PicoGUS, works great except for the PSU fan.
You can’t hear it but it is spinning albeit very slow.
Now on the top side of the PSU there’s a sticker saying: Smart Fan Controller.
Am I right assuming the fan will spin up when the PSU gets hotter? Never seen this on an AT PSU, only ATX.
Yes, Smart fan control in PSU is like the cpu thermal fan control on motherboards.
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
If the PSU label does advertise a fan controller, then that might as well be why it's spinning slow.
But just to be 100% sure, open the PSU and have a look inside (after disconnecting it from wall power, of course.)
Basically, give the fan blades a spin with your finger. If they stop immediately or almost immediately without "wobbling" back and forth before coming to a stop, the fan bearings might be going bad. If it fan blades do "wobble" before they stop rotating, then the fan is probably OK.
momaka wrote on 2024-03-10, 19:49:If the PSU label does advertise a fan controller, then that might as well be why it's spinning slow.
Yes that’s what I thought. Well the PC ran for a couple of hours and nothing exploded so I guess it’s ok. Power output sure is, that was the first thing I checked.
Well, if you have the time, give it a check anyways. Should take no more than 10-15 minutes to open the PSU and give the fan a quick test as noted above. If all good, you can close it back up and let it be.
Besides, it's good to check PSUs from time to time, especially if they are known to use less-than-good capacitor brands. I check mine every few years, depending on when time allows (no set schedule.) Sometimes this has allowed me to catch impeding failures.
The only issue I can see with this is that old PC cases were usually designed with the idea that the PSU fan would act as the main exhaust. Over the years design shifted and ended that idea. If your PSU is only spinning up the fan to cool itself off then it may not be doing its job of exhausting hot air from the rest of the case.
Now, I know the Pentium 75 doesn't get very hot but we don't know what the rest of your build is like. In my MMX 233 build I have a Riva TNT which gets pretty hot so I had to build some custom exhaust for the machine.
