Instructor: In this lesson, we're going to talk
about power supply connectors.
Now, when you look at a power supply,
you're going to have different connectors
that power different devices.
The first one we have is what's known
as the main board or motherboard adapter
that's going to provide the power to our motherboard.
Now, this adapter has changed a little bit over time.
Originally with the ATX standard,
you only needed a 20-pin connector
to provide all the power to your motherboard.
Over time, though, this was expanded
to 24-pins for a standard ATX 12 volt power supply.
Now, many of your newer power supplies
will actually give you what's called
a 20+4 pin connector instead of a 24-pin connector.
Now why it's called a 20+4
is because it's actually two connectors
that get married or coupled together
before plugging them into a 24-pin connector
on the motherboard.
This allows you to use a modern power supply
for older machines or newer machines,
because it can support either the 20-pin
or the 24-pin by putting the 20+4 together
into a single 24-pin connector.
That being said, a lot of our newer power supplies
are abandoning this 20+4 connector,
and instead are using only a 24-pin connector.
The reason for this is that most people
aren't going to find a motherboard these days
that will still support a 20-pin adapter.
At this point, almost all modern motherboards
use the full 24-pins.
So a lot of the newer and more powerful power supplies
will just have a single 24-pin connector.
If you see one that is 24-pins or a 20+4,
you'll know what to do with it.
Simply put the 20+4 together
and it becomes the same as a 24-pin connector.
Now, in addition to the main board
or motherboard power connector,
we also have a processor power connector
normally labeled as CPU power.
Now CPU power can actually have a four,
six, or eight-pin connector,
but most modern CPUs are going to use eight pins.
For this reason, most power supplies these days
will just provide with a single eight-pin connector.
Although some have broken this up
into a four plus four configuration,
similar to the 20+4 configuration we use
for the main board power.
If yours has a four plus four configuration
and your CPU power on your motherboard requires eight pins,
you simply marry the four and four together
to create an eight-pin connector
and plug it into the board.
Next we have PCIe or PCI express adapter card power ports.
Now some external cards will require additional power.
For example, if you have a very powerful graphics card
that you're putting into a PCI express X16 slot,
that slot can only provide 25 Watts of power by default.
And some on the most modern motherboards
can support up to 75 Watts of power,
but that's still not enough
for a lot of these really powerful graphics cards.
So you can plug the graphics card
into the slot and get 75 lots of power through that slot.
And in addition to that,
they may have a six or eight-pin connector
on the top of the card to plug
in additional power directly from the power supply.
I was actually installing a new graphics card
in my system the other day
and it actually had two additional power ports on it.
So I had to connect two eight-pin power supply cables
that were in this PCIe format
from the power supply to this card
in addition to the 75 Watts of power
that was already getting from my motherboard
through my PCI express X16 dedicated graphics card slot.
These PCIe power connectors are going to take the form
of either a six-pin or eight-pin connector.
Because of this, most modern power supplies
will provide you with either an eight-pin
or a six plus two pin.
This six plus two will allow you
to use a six-pin part for older cards,
and then put the six plus two together
to create an eight-pin
if you're using a more modern PCI express card
that supports eight pins for its power connector.
Another type of power connector you might come
across is what's known as a SATA power connector.
Now a SATA power connector is going to be used
to power your SATA drives.
Things like a CD, a DVD, a Blue-ray disc,
or an internal hard drive.
These are going to be an L-shaped connector
that have 15 pins.
And essentially they look just like SATA data cable,
which is seven pins,
but they're longer because they have 15 pins.
The last type of power connector
you might come across is what's known as a Molex connector.
Now a Molex connector is a legacy connector,
and it was used for older IDE and PATA hard disks,
as well as older CD and DVD drives.
In most modern systems,
you're probably not going to use a Molex connector,
but most power supplies still include
at least one to be able to have it
for backwards compatibility
in case you're using this power supply in a legacy system.
Now, in addition to this, you may need more
than one Molex connector or more SATA connectors
or more PCI connectors or things like that.
What can you do in this case?
Well, you can use what's known as a Y connector,
and a Y connector simply takes one connector
and turns it into two.
Most of these power cords are going to be able
to support multiple devices off of them,
but they only have one connector to start with.
So if you wanted to support two legacy Molex devices,
but you only had one Molex connector,
you can actually use a Y-shape Molex connector to split
that one Molex connector into two Molex connectors
one for each device.
In addition to this, you can also find Y adapters
that will convert from one type of connector to another.
For example, there are PCIe adapter Y connectors
that will go from PCIe into Molex
or going from PCIe into SATA,
and this will allow you to turn that PCIe connector
into twos SATA connectors or to Molex connectors
depending on the Y connector you buy for your system.
So remember when it comes to power supply connectors,
there are lots of different connectors you can use
including your motherboard or main board power,
your processor power, PCI express, SATA,
Molex, and Y-type adapters.
The particular connector you're going to use
is going to depend on the device
that you're trying to support
and you'll have to plug the right one into the right device.
Now, each of these different connectors are keyed
so they only fit into the connector in one direction.
So this can help make sure that there's no issues
with putting the wrong polarity,
such as positive or negative into the wrong place.
(electronic tone buzzing)