Original subtitles

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)