power supply question?

[rojoreds]

This seems pretty straight forward but I have just opened a new power supply out of the box. It is a Silverstone Zeus 750W. My question is this....out of the box I plugged the power cord to the back of the supply and plugged it in...turned the on switch on...the indicator light comes on but the fan does not come on....is this normal? Does the fan have a thermal switch that keeps it off until it heats up or should it come on immedately? I connected a case fan to one of the connectors and it did not come on either.

[blue60007]

You don't have it installed in a computer? If you want to see if it's working, you'll need to hook it up to a computer. Just hitting the switch on the PSU won't switch it on. The motherboard sends a signal (when you hit the case power button) to the PSU telling it to switch on.

[newbuilder14]

I had the same question and Blue answered it as well a while back.

[rojoreds]

OK interesting...this is not my first build but it IS the first time I actually tried to power up a Power supply without the mobo installed. This is an aspire x-cruiser case and has a fan at the top...I had to remove the fan to install the power supply (tight fit). I have three other case fans that I installed and wanted to check the direction of the fan airflow. I want two of them blowing out and two bringing air in. Thought I would just hook up the fans to the PSU and see air flow direction. The light on the back of the PSU glowed amber instead of green....did not realize unit has to receive a signal back from the mobo before it would actually allow power through. Thanks for the tip.

[Mr.Ferrari]

If you really want to test psu without motherboard, then you can short it..
Just use a piece of solder or a paperclip and bridge(connect) the black(ground) and green wire on the 24pin Motherboard power cable. Make sure you attach a load such as a hard drive when doing this..

[clroberts]

Or, if you want to, they make power supply testers. Antec has one or you can go to CompUsa and get one. They plug into the 20 or 24 pin connector that your motherboard connects to. If you do that, you will get to see if your power supply is any good (Except the load test) and all the fans that turn on during operation will turn on. You can get a load by just plugging in some harddrives to the 4 pin molex connections as Mr. Ferrari mentioned.

[newbuilder14]

All this for testing a PSU? Why not just connect it right up? It is a reputable brand.

[glc]

Newbuilder - the purpose is not to test the power supply itself:

I have three other case fans that I installed and wanted to check the direction of the fan airflow. I want two of them blowing out and two bringing air in. Thought I would just hook up the fans to the PSU and see air flow direction.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by rojoreds I have three other case fans that I installed and wanted to check the direction of the fan airflow. I want two of them blowing out and two bringing air in. Thought I would just hook up the fans to the PSU and see air flow direction.

The body of each fan will have arrows molded into them showing fan rotation and air flow direction. If you can't see these arrows, just remember that fans will blow towards the plastic motor bracing (most case fans have 3 or 4 of these braces holding the motor).

I've attached two pictures...the intake side of a fan and the exhaust side of a fan. Air blows out from the exhaust side of a fan.

Cricket