replacement power supply unit

Richie-from-the-Boro

Its going to be about 6 or 7 years old .. .. 2004 / 2005, was the date the 3700+ was released

esuhl

macman wrote: »

No, you don't want to start dismantling a PSU, the capacitors can hold hold considerable charges, you just change the whole PSU.

Absolutely. I consider myself a bit of a techie, and can confidently deal with mains voltages, but I would NEVER EVER dismantle a PSU or CRT monitor. They can hold massive charges even when they have been disconnected for several hours/days. It's just not worth the risk.

Richie-from-the-Boro

esuhl wrote: »

Absolutely. I consider myself a bit of a techie, and can confidently deal with mains voltages, but I would NEVER EVER dismantle a PSU or CRT monitor. They can hold massive charges even when they have been disconnected for several hours/days. It's just not worth the risk.

Been there, done it, hundreds [ old days ] of times.

- pull the mains a couple of hours before starting
- then [ still off the mains ] push the power / reboot button a couple of to empty the caps
- then carry on - safe~as~owses

NOTE 1 : applies to old CRT's as well as PSU's
NOTE 2 : in those far off days it was to increase the cooling by ' superglue [ing ] additional heatsinks and perforating the metal shroud to allow more airflow!

stulaunch

Should the psu fan run all the time, or just when needed?

JasX

stulaunch wrote: »

Should the psu fan run all the time, or just when needed?

will vary by model and whether they are doing anything 'intelligent' with fan control,

Cheapo PSU -more likely to just run the fan full pelt all the time (will be noisy)

Expensive hi tech PSU -more likely to have some form of intellignet fan control that slows/stops the fan when not needed.

Only way to tell for sure is work out your PSU make/model number and look it up (even then you might be in the dark if yours is an obscure/unbranded one with little info published about it)

Richie-from-the-Boro

stulaunch wrote: »

Should the psu fan run all the time, or just when needed?

See #12 if the motherboard is that old its very unlikely the case fan [ or even the CPU fan ] has a facility to slow / stop / go. The only ones that were around were the old, and at the time expensive ' bulb ' [ thermocouple ] variety.

See #8 your problem, and next diagnostic solution was / is in #8, attend to it.

- if you [ air ] clean the inside of the case & PSU and it works it was carp housekeeping
- if it does not work replace the two quid fan with a like~for~like~unit
- or buy and fit any £20 - £30 PSU with similar power ratings

NOTE if you don't clean out you are very very likely to get secondary cooling fan issues like northbridge / GPU / CPU.

I'll now leave this thread to others with more patience.