Splitting a Splitter?

[the.ronin]

I've got 6 drives I need to power. I was thinking about powering all of them through just one molex cable from my PSU which has 3 molex plugs. 1 molex plug would hook up to a molex Y splitter and each split would hook up to an ATX to serial ATA splitter. I'd still have 1 molex plug from that single cable to spare.

Would this work?

 

[Crispy002]

That's a lot of current to pull through the first few wires on the chain. Can you do it? Probably. Would I do it? No.

 

[drescherjm]

Yes it will work. I have had to do this at work when replacing 2 power supplies with a single supply for 20 hard drives. Make sure the first splitter is on the shortest path to the powersupply and not on the far end. If you are worried feel the wires before the splitter with all 6 drives running for an hour. If they are warm (compared to the other wires) then this is not good. Also, if you have a multimeter handy take a voltage reading at the farthest end.

 

[Rossi~]

So long as the voltage and amps are good at the last point you're good.

 

[Cschill1290]

I did it before on a 350w psu. I had molex split into 2 molex, and one of those molex split into another 2 molex. It ran fine, but if I tried to run 2 hard drives in that system, it wouldn't power either of them. Only one at a time would work.

 

[the.ronin]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I do not feel confident in the build quality of my power supply (OCZ StealthXtreme) so I think I might just go the conventional route – at least as far as powering HDs go. I’ll leave the splitters to powering peripheral devices like fans and LEDs.