-: In this lesson, you're going to learn
how to install a power supply in your computer
to provide power to all of your different components.
This includes your CPU, your memory cards,
your storage devices, and all of your external cards.
Now, your power supply is going to either have an input
of US standard 120 volts
or a European standard of 230 volts.
In my case, I'm in the United States,
so I'm using 120-volt power supply
that's going to take that 120 volts AC
and convert it into DC power at 3.35 and 12 volt
for the right components inside of our system.
Now, in my particular computer,
we're going to be building this
using an RM850x power supply from Corsair.
This means this has 850 Watts
and it's going to be able to give us
lots of power to all of our components.
Now, if you're using a desktop or workplace PC,
you're probably not going to need something this powerful,
but if you're doing a gaming PC
with a really strong processor and a strong graphics card,
you're going to need a lot of power.
And in my particular build, I need about 750 to 850 Watts
which is why I chose to go with the 850-Watt power supply.
Now, when you look at your power supply,
you're going to see that there's a big fan on top,
and this is going to be able
to expel heat from this power supply.
Because in the power supply, there's a transformer
and that's going to transform it from that high voltage AC
to the low voltage DC that we're going to use in our computer.
And so, it's going to generate a lot of heat when it does that.
And that's what that fan's going to be for.
Now, in my particular power supply,
they use what are known as detachable cables.
And you'll see all of these up here are the different cables
that can attach to the side of this power supply
to the different components in my computer.
Now, I'm going to go ahead
and show you each of these individually,
but keep in mind if you're in a normal workplace
or office environment,
your power supply will normally have all of these cables
already connected to your power supply,
and they're not detachable the way this one is.
Because this one is made for gaming PCs,
it was made with detachable power cords,
so that way, you could take those out
if you're not Using them,
so they don't block additional airflow going through the PC.
The first one we have is over here
and this one is what we call a 24-pin connector.
This is going to be the power to your main motherboard.
Now, in addition to that,
if you're using an older power supply,
you may see 20-pin or 20+4 pin powers.
This is because some of the older motherboards
only used 20 pins to give mainboard power,
but most modern ones do use 24.
So, some of the power supplies in between
had what's called a 20+4,
which was actually two different connectors
that you'd marry up together to create a 24-pin connector.
On my power supply, it only supports a 24-pin-board,
because again, we're using this
for a modern computer with a modern power supply.
The next grouping of cables I have here
is actually for my CPU power.
And you'll see this is actually
an 8-pin plug or connector on this
that'll connect to the socket where the CPU is.
Then, we have PCIe connectors.
Now, these are what are called a 6+2.
And you could see that clearly here.
Notice there's two pins here and six here.
Some graphics cards use six pins, some use eight.
And if you're going to be using eight,
you'll simply marry these together like this.
And now, it looks like an 8-pin
that can connect to that graphics card.
Over here, we have some SATA power connectors.
Now, you'll notice this is a 15-pin SATA power connector
that will connect to our different drives
such as our hard drive to give it power.
Next, we have what's called a Molex connector.
Now, this is an older style 4-pin connector
and you can notice the difference
because it's got those round pins inside of it.
You're probably not going to be using this
unless you're using some kind of an old device
like a tape backup drive
or a really old hard drive, CD or DVD player.
All right.
The last thing we have in our case
is some zip ties to do cable management with,
as well as some screws
to be able to connect this power supply into our case.
So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to clear off my table,
bring up my case,
and we're going to go and install this power supply.
Now, you'll notice on the back of this case,
there is a hole at the bottom
and this is where our power supply is going to go,
but we can't insert it from this direction
because of this metal lip right here
that's going to screw in the power supply.
So, instead, we have to take off the front side of the case
which was actually where we had the bottom side
of our motherboard, as you can see here.
And this will allow us to slide that power supply in
and then screw it down from the top.
So, what I'm going to do is grab my power supply.
And then, I'm going to go ahead and put this into the case.
Now, notice there is a side with a fan
and there is a side without the fan.
On our particular case,
we want the fan to be pointing downward
because that's going to be able to suck the air out of the case
and the power supply
and put it out the bottom and dissipate that heat.
So, we're just going to go ahead and turn that around,
so it's facing the bottom.
We're going to slide that in.
We're going to line up our holes,
as you could see here from the top down view.
And there are four screws,
one on each corner of the power supply,
and you'll just go ahead and screw all four of those in,
making it nice and secure in the case.
And once you get all four screws in,
I'd just like to go back and tighten them one more time
to make sure everything's in there nice and snug.
And you could see that power supply is not moving anywhere.
Now, you all also notice there's a warning notice here
that says that this particular power supply
doesn't have a fan
that's going to spin when you're at low power loads.
This is a function of trying to keep it quiet,
but as soon as it starts realizing there's too much heat,
that fan will kick on
and push out that air through the bottom.
So, I'm just going to go ahead and remove that sticker.
Okay.
Now, that we have our power supply installed in the back,
we'd be able to plug this in to our wall outlet
once you're ready to turn on the computer,
but we haven't done any connections from this power supply
to our different components inside of the computer.
Now, on my particular case, when I turn this over,
you can see that we have this big metal grading
that keeps the power supply covered
and away from the rest of the components.
And underneath it, there's actually a hole right here
that you can actually run those cables through
for each of the different devices
that you want to connect to it.
Now that we have the power supply installed into the case,
we're going to go ahead and connect the different cables
that we want to use to connect our different components.
In my case, the first one I want to do
is actually my main board power.
Now, again, this is my 24-pin connector.
And on this side, you'll see,
these are broke up into two sets of pins
that are going to be connected to the power supply.
Now, underneath, there's actually
a hole right here on the case
that's going to slide under
to get to all the different components
while we keep everything else
nice and clean back here underneath the power supply.
Now, where I want to plug this in is actually where it says
motherboard power on the back of this power supply.
So, I'm just going to go ahead and do that.
And I'm going to put the smaller one in first
and then my larger one.
And you want to make sure they go fully in
and they click to make sure they are in the right position.
The next cable we want to put in
is the one for our PCIe x16 graphics card
which is going to be our 6+2 connector.
So, I'm going to go ahead and grab that
and I'm going to unbundle it.
And we're going to do the exact same thing
by plugging it into the power supply
and then pushing it through that metal hole
back so we can get it to the card once we install that card.
And on my power supply,
there's power for that right near the top,
so I'm just going to go ahead and take that one in.
Now, the other one we need
to make sure we plug in is our CPU power.
So, I'm going to take that cord
and I'm going to plug that in
right next to the PCIe plug that we just did.
Now, if you're having trouble getting your cables
into your power supply,
one of the things you can actually do
is unscrew your power supply and twist it,
so that you can then get it
to be able to operate and plug all your cables in
before putting the power supply in.
And I'll show you how to do this.
And by doing this, you can plug everything in first
and then run those cables underneath.
So, up here, I have my motherboard power, both of those.
And then, we'll plug in our PCIe CPU power.
In this case, this is a CPU one.
And then, I'll also need a SATA cable,
so I'm going to put that in the SATA PATA one,
up here in the top left of my power supply.
And we'll just go ahead and plug that in there.
And that will be for my hard drive
that we're going to install later.
Now, in addition to that,
I do need one PCI x16 cable for my graphics card.
So, I'll go ahead and I'll install that.
And that should be it.
Now, I have my main board power connected, my CPU connected,
my SATA for my hard disc connected,
and my PCIe x16 external graphics card power connected.
Once I've done all that, I can go ahead
and put all of these cables through that hole.
And that way, it gets over to the motherboard area.
And once all those cables are in, we're going to go ahead
and again, twist that fan to the bottom portion of the case,
slide it into place.
And then, screw it back into place.
Okay, now that we have gotten
all four of those screws back in,
we now have those internal cables
routed from the power supply through the hole.
And when we go down here to the top down view,
you'll be able to see all those cables
have now come through that hole
and they're ready for us to be able to connect it
to the different components that we're going to need.
So, for now, I'm going to put those off to the side
and get them out of the way.
And then, what we want to do is be able to go ahead
and connect that main board power.
Now, the main board power is going to be right here
off to the side of the board,
right in front of our memory module locations.
And the main board power is simply this 24-pin connector.
Once again, we're going to come straight in
and we're going to have this clip go right on
and it's going to clip into place.
And there we go.
Now, you can see, it is clipped into place right there.
Next, we want to go ahead and connect the power for our CPU.
Now, the power for our CPU is actually in the back corner.
And you can see that 8-pin connector
on the back corner of the motherboard.
And that is where we're going to be
connecting our CPU power too.
Now that that has been clipped into place,
we have two cables left
and we have our SATA cable, as well as our PCIe x16 cable.
So, at this point, we have done everything we can
with this power supply
until I put in that graphics card and that hard drive.
And so, once I do that,
I will show you how to connect the power
to those devices as we install those drives.
Now, in addition to that,
you also want to check the setting on your power supply.
So, I'm going to go ahead and turn this case one more time,
so we can see that power supply.
Now, on my particular power supply, this RM850x,
it is a autosensing, dual voltage power supply.
Now, by default, it does have this 3-pin connector
that went to a 120-volt AC wall connector,
as I showed you when I did the unboxing.
But if I wanted to plug this in Europe,
I could do that by simply changing out that cord
and plugging it into a 230 outlet.
And this power supply will still detect
exactly what is being sent from the wall outlet
and convert that down to the 3.35 and 12 volts DC
that we need for the interior components of our computer.
Now, on some older power supplies,
they are not autosensing.
And so, if you have one that has a small little switch,
it'll either switch to 110 or switch to 230.
This one doesn't have it,
but it would be usually in this location,
and you'll just use a screwdriver to flip it
to the right location based on where you are in the world.
If you're in the United States
or one of the US power type countries
that use 110 or 120 volts AC,
you'll put it into that 120 volts AC position.
If you're in Europe or one of the Asian countries
that use 230 or 240 volts AC,
you will switch it to the 230 volts AC position.
And that way, you don't burn out those power supplies.
But again, in a lot of the newer ones,
they do do autosensing like this one.
And you can plug in either of those voltages
and it will work just fine.
All right, in this lesson,
you learned how to install a power supply into a case
and how to connect the different cables
to the different parts of your motherboard
including your motherboard main power
with that 24-pin connector
and the 8-pin CPU processor socket power.
For now, we left off the SATA and the PCIe connectors
because we haven't put in
our hard drive or our expansion card yet.
But when we get to those sections,
I'll make sure to show you how to connect those to the card.