"larry moe 'n curly" wrote:


Terry Pinnell wrote:

My 300W PSU on my 4-year old PC has died. It was underpowered anyway
(after adding extra HDs and a DVD drive) so I'm about to order a 400W
replacement. My problem is that I'm not really clear about the
specifications for the cable connectors. I see all sorts of
descriptions on various web pages:
5.25" Device Power Connectors
3.5" Device Power Connectors
Molex connectors

Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-450P 450W Active PFC PSU
------------------------------------------------
"24-pin power connector with detachable 4-pin section for backwards
compatibility with ATX 20-pin motherboards."
5.25" Device Power Connectors : 4 SATA
3.5" Device Power Connectors :

My dead unit has 5 connectors each containing 4 round sockets about
2.5mm in diameter. They were powering my 3 hard drives, my CD drive,
and my DVD drive. (A pair of wires also went from one of these to the
rear fan.) Are these 3.5" connectors? Or are they what I see described
elsewhere as 'Molex connectors'?

Molex company makes lots of different connectors, including the power
connectors for mobos and 3.5" hard and 5.25" drives (often wrongly
called IDE power connectors for PATA drives). I don't know what 3.5"
connectors are. Could they be for 3.5" floppy drives?

My unit also has several other connectors, of which the only one being
used was a small 4-hole one, a bit like a phone socket connector, used
for the floppy. Is that what is described above as a 5.25" connector?

Probably.

My unit also has a few connectors that were not being used: a little
4-hole one (2 rows of 2) which I *think* is described on some sites as
needed for certain motherboards? And one with 6 rectangular holes. And
a spare one like the one used for the floppy.

The 4-hole one is for extra +12V power for certain mobos. The 6-hole
one is probably for high-performance graphics cards.

I don't suppose anyone knows of a page showing labeled pictures of all
these please?

Here's a guide to PSUs that includes descriptions and photos of the
various connectors:

http://computeradvice.sytes.net/index.php?showtopic=30

It also lists good and bad PSUs, but in its list of good ones the best
are probably Antec, Seasonic, Fortron-Source/Sparkle/Hi-Q/PowerQ/Trend,
Zippy-Emacs, and PC Power & Cooling. I don't know about all the other
brands, like SilentX and Silverstone, but you may want to look for
Fortron (most model numbers start with "FSP") because they're not only
good but also cheap. Thermaltake/High Power/Sirtec isn't the best.
Other good brands are Delta and Lite-On, which in the U.S. are rarely
sold on the retail market, and Channel Well, although for the latter
you have to be careful because their quality is all over the place, and
you want only those that are like the Antec SmartPower and TruePower,
their "B" and "A" suffix series, i.e., CWT-350BSP, CWT-430ADP ("S" =
single fan, "D" = double fan, "P" = power factory corrected).

Great, thanks Larry.

--
Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK