Safe to remove fan?

[Chicken_Tendie]

I've got an old 430 watt PSU and I am using it to run some electronics that draw about 5 watts. However, the fan on this psu is very loud. Is it safe to remove the fan?
 

[Sealance]

You might wanna replace the fan with a quiet one

[Weed man]

Opening a PSU is dangerous and can possibly kill you so you should be careful.

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, Chicken_Tendie said:

I've got an old 430 watt PSU and I am using it to run some electronics that draw about 5 watts. However, the fan on this psu is very loud. Is it safe to remove the fan?
 

Just replace the PSU. Decent stuff from EVGA and Corsair sometimes drops as low as $20, which isn't too much more than the price of a fan.

[BloodyWaters]

BE CAREFUL OPENING UP THE PSU!!!!!! I would not recommend removing the fan entirely, but you could replace it with a silent one. But I think you should  just buy a new one, they are really cheap these days.

[loculus]

Sure, if you know what you're doing, you can just run it without the fan. It's unlikely to need active cooling for that level of power draw, though if it's really inefficient at these lower loads I guess it could be a bit bad over the long term if you're running this continuously.

 

Out of curiosity, what's the load, and how much power are you drawing each from +12V, +5V, +3.3V? Have you checked the output voltages? If some older group regulated design it's possible the outputs could stray far from nominal values depending on the loading, which may or may not matter for your application. Probably not.

[Chicken_Tendie]

21 minutes ago, loculus said:

Sure, if you know what you're doing, you can just run it without the fan. It's unlikely to need active cooling for that level of power draw, though if it's really inefficient at these lower loads I guess it could be a bit bad over the long term if you're running this continuously.

 

Out of curiosity, what's the load, and how much power are you drawing each from +12V, +5V, +3.3V? Have you checked the output voltages? If some older group regulated design it's possible the outputs could stray far from nominal values depending on the loading, which may or may not matter for your application. Probably not.

I have done some testing, the largest variation from the intended voltage is 0.4 volts, and I'll rarely draw over 10 watts.

 

Also, to all the people concerned for my safety, I will be taking all of the nessecary precautions, such as discharging the capacitors and (of course) unplugging it.