• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

splain me this (n00b advice needed)

D

DemonEater

n00b
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
12
A tale of two systems...

I'm in the process of assembling a second box from spare parts. I just bought a PS - Antec Smartpower 2.0 350w. The PS in my current main system is a 300w Turbo-Cool or something that came with my case. It has been a fine PSU so far, running both my old Athlon and my current P4 2.4 for years without a hitch or lockup yet.

I would LIKE to swap the newer, nicer, more powerful, quieter PS into my main system, but of the three drive connector cables, one is SATA, where on the old one all three are old-style PATA. I don't have any SATA drives, so that cable would become useless in my current system, and everything would get plugged into the other two.

What I can't make out is if it's preferable to have all my stuff (two optical drives, hard drive, 5900 Ultra, and two case fans) connected to three cables on a 300w psu, or two cables on a 350w. Are the drive cables seperate with finite amounts of power on each, or does each provide as much as needed up to the max of the PSU?

Should I just subscribe to the if it ain't broke don't fix it school on this one, at least until I buy an SATA-capable MB and drives?

Thanks a ton in advance.
 
All those cables have common termination, they all share the same power.

Get an SATA to 4-pin molex adaptor. ;)
 
Thanks! Glad to know it won't hurt to run everything off just the two cables. I'll swap it when I rearrange my desk to accomodate my new second monitor :p

Where do you get SATA to Molex adapters? I had a look around, all I can find are molex to SATA to allow new drives to run off old PSUs, not the other way 'round...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top