Question about power supply

[daman]

I have my power supply and fans for my case, but do not have motherboard. Is it possible to turn on power supply to power the fans to see what they look like?

 

[deadlee690]

you can use a wire or even a paper clip to short the green wire to any black wire on your 24pin connector.

 

[daman]

you can use a wire or even a paper clip to short the green wire to any black wire on your 24pin connector.

is it safe? will i get electrocuted?

 

[deadlee690]

yes, just be sure to unplug from the wall first and then plug in the paper clip. i wouldn't touch the paper clip while its running though. you can see a photo of how to do it on swiftechs website. people do this a lot in water cooling so they can run their pumps to fill a system without having the rest of the pc on.

 

[daman]

yes, just be sure to unplug from the wall first and then plug in the paper clip. i wouldn't touch the paper clip while its running though. you can see a photo of how to do it on swiftechs website. people do this a lot in water cooling so they can run their pumps to fill a system without having the rest of the pc on.

I have 11 fans hooked to a front panel controller. Is it ok to test it with that many fans plus the control panel?

 

[deadlee690]

no, thats a lot of amps to run through a loose fitting crappy wire like a paper clip, your fans would be dim and flicker. you could power a few 12v items no problem though

 

[4745454b]

I was going to caution that you that a PSU isn't designed to run with no load on it except for some of the newest ones. 11 (WTF?????) fans should be enough of a load however to prevent anything bad from happening to the PSU.

 

[delluser1]

I have 11 fans hooked to a front panel controller. Is it ok to test it with that many fans plus the control panel?

As long as the fan controller can handle it



@deadlee
You were doing so well.
The current isn't running thru the paper clip.

 

[jsc]

is it safe? will i get electrocuted?

No. The green wire is a control line. Open circuit, there is 5 volts on it. When shorted to ground (like to turn the PSU on), only a couple of milliamps (thousandths of an amp) flow through it.

Hey, I was curious once, so I checked several of my power supplies.

 

[delluser1]

Hey, I was curious once, so I checked several of my power supplies.

You didn't lick the paper clip, did you ? :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[deadlee690]

on my psu i get 2.5v through the paper clip but i still try not to touch it. you can never be to safe when dealing with electricity. in my pc with 8 120mm fans they won't come on full power with the paper clip but i can run about 4 no problem.

 

[hunter315]

The green line is raised up to 5 V by a very weak source so that when the motherboard shorts it to ground to boot the PSU up it doesn't fight it or damage anything. I would be surprised if the source was even capable of providing 100 mA, remember, its normally running a dead short between it and ground when the system is on so you don't want to have much if any current capability there or you can start heating up wires and efficiency takes a hit.


And as delluser said, you were doing so well, i was surprised. Stick around, you have potential.