Why does my psu overheat

The fastest method to cool down a power supply that is currently heating up is to open up the case and use external fans to cool it down quickly. Another effective solution is to clean out the dust in the internal fans using something like canned air. You will need to identify what is the main reason that is causing your power supply to gather so much heat.

If your PSU is connected to certain components that draw more power than what the PSU can supply, it leads to overloading. One way to check this is to pull out your calculator take the sum of all the wattage readings for every component that uses the power supply which includes your motherboard, processor, memory cards, drives, and bus-powered USB devices. Also, check our exclusive tutorial on how to use a PSU shroud. Some power supplies come with a feature called power factor correction or PFC which makes more wattage available to the system when comparing with another power supply without PFC.

Fan failure is another major issue that can put your entire setup at risk if not fixed immediately. There could be an incorrect input voltage or a short circuit if you notice that the fan stops as soon as the power is turned on. In this scenario, you should also notice that the computer is unusable.

You can find out if your fan is failing by listening closely to the unit and observing if it is making less noise than usual which indicates fan failure. Improper airflow can also be a headache and you can minimize this by securing cable ties to make sure they are a safe distance away from the fans and power supply. You must log in or register to reply here. Similar threads Question PSU fan loud, overheating.

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Oct 1, Jul 1, Install Steam. Dutch View Profile View Posts. Showing 1 - 10 of 10 comments. Might be one of those two things. Does the event viewer log give any clues? Amuro View Profile View Posts. If it's the PSU, the event viewer would just say something like a kernel-power error which just means the system rebooted without properly shut down.

It does sound like the PSU is dying. The power supply's capability to cool the system depends in part on free airflow space outside the system. If the computer is kept in a confined area such as a closet or security cabinet without adequate ventilation , power supply failures due to overheating are likely. Even systems in ordinary office environments can have airflow problems; make sure that several inches of free air space exist behind the fan output for any computer.

As you have seen in previous chapters, the interior of the typical computer is a messy place. Wide ribbon cables used for hard and floppy drives, drive power cables, and expansion cards create small air dams that block air flow between the heat sources, such as the motherboard, CPU, drives, and memory modules, and the fan in the power supply.

Should you try to replace a standard power supply fan? Because the power supply is a sealed unit, you would need to remove the cover from most power supplies to gain access to the fan.

The wire coils inside a power supply retain potentially lethal electrical charges. Instead, scrap the power supply and replace it with a higher-rated unit. See "Removal and Replacement of the Power Supply" later in this chapter. Use cable ties to secure excess ribbon cable and power connectors out of the way of the fans and the power supply. Most power supplies, except for a few of the early ATX power supplies , use a cooling technique called negative pressure ; in other words, the power supply fan works like a weak vacuum cleaner, pulling air through vents in the case, past the components , and out through the fan.

Vacuum cleaners are used to remove dust, dirt, cat hairs, and so on from living rooms and offices, and even the power supply's weak impression of a vacuum cleaner works the same way. You never know what you'll find inside of a PC that hasn't been cleaned out for a year or two. So how can you get rid of the dust and gunk?

You can use either a vacuum cleaner especially designed for computer use or compressed air to remove dirt and dust from inside the system. If you use compressed air, be sure to spread newspapers around the system to catch the dirt and dust.

See Chapter 13, "Safety and Recycling," for more information. Most systems today rely on more than the power supply fan to cool the system's interior.