My old man just gave me another broken down Dell. He had five(5) OptiPlex's Small Form Factor (SFF) from Kiosk machines. Now he has three(3) Dells and I have two(2) Dells.
I used the last one for my Wife so She would stop playing with my Mac's. It is a Dell OptiPlex GX270 SFF. It was making some fan noise over the winter and as of late it stopped making the noise. It has 2GB memory, Windows XP and a 200+ GB HD.
The new computer is a Dell OptiPlex GX280 SFF with XP pro and a 80gb HD. It will suddenly turn its self off and blink the yellow light. I talked to a friend and he had me open the case and look at the power supply fan. It was not spinning. He had me spin it for 10 min. It will start spinning fast then stuttered and stopped. The fan never seemed to work it's way back to speed.
While I was at it I looked at the Wife's GX270. There I noticed that the power supply fan was spinning really slow.
So I ordered two(2) power supplies. One for each computer. Plus I ordered 4GB for the GDX280 because I like memory.
Just this morning the GX270 turned it's self off signaling an urgent need for the power supply.
While I was at it I researched the matter and discovered that this is common for the SFF computers. I am told that the power supplies fail all the time on these machines and they are not that great.
To me it seems to happen after the fan stops spinning and it overheats. So my thought is that, ,maybe I should buy an extra fan to keep it cool? I was looking at a
StarTech NBfan. But is looks small (<2 CFM) still I only have a 20mm square area to put a fan on the outside of the computer and my PCI ports are half height. My bud is telling me I need more fan flow and should put something inside the computer.
So are there any recommendations as to wether or not I need a cooling fan and what kind to use?
