Gadgetory

of course we all know you shouldn't mix and match power supply cables but if you end up with a bin full of assorted power supply cables then there's a good trick to figuring out where do they belong so other than looking at the cable and trying to go by sight which is a dangerous proposition the next thing you can do is use a DMM and you use a cheap one you don't have to use a high-end one like this you get one for 30 bucks and just probe the cable to figure out if the pinout matches so we're gonna show you how to do that today now the reason this is useful is because if you do mix and match power supply cables as we showed a couple years ago what can happen is you'll kill either the part on the receiving end or you can damage the power supply depending on how its wired because wiring is not standardized on the power supply and so that's what we're gonna be talking about today before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly and their high-end thermal compounds Thermal Grizzly makes cryo not paste for high thermal performance and conductivity without being electrically conductive so you don't have to worry about shorting components cryo knot is particularly good for replacing stock GPU pastes as cryo knot is a non curing compound learn more at the link in the description below so here's the quick version of our previous video and if you didn't see it we'll put a card on the screen whichever corner that goes in you should watch it but the quick version is the power supply side of the cabling it's got a key of course which just means that the edges of the pins are chamfered in different ways so you shouldn't be able to mix and match it but that doesn't stop people because these connectors are pretty available and the manufacturer will just buy whatever and then match it but it doesn't mean that if the key fits the pin in that key has to be the same you might have a 12 volt line where normally there's a 5 or you might have a 12 where there's a ground which is bad or you might have a 12 where there's a blank and so you can't mix and match power supply cables typically because the trouble is you might kill it for example if you mix SATA cable in from a pic tube fenders from like a coarser power supply onto an EVGA one or something it could kill the SSD or it can kill the rest of the system who makes a different cable so that's that that's the concern the good news is if you really need an extra for example CPU cable like I did for one of our C sonic power supplies and you only have one that you can find you can start testing your bin of extra cables and try and figure out if any of them will fit it's possible because the power supply manufacturers are all using the same couple of suppliers see sonic being one of them it's possible that of three different vendors like EVGA Corsair NZXT whomever if three different manufacturers use C Sonic for their supplier see Sonic might have used the same pin out for each vendor now that's not always the case it is not a safe assumption but it's something that gives you somewhere to start if you have different power supplies you can probe the cable and just do a simple continuity test to see is it continuous from the top left to the bottom left on the other end and then does the other cable match that and if all the pins match then it's safe to mix them as long as the key also fits of course so that's we're going to show you I've got a see Sonic prime cable here this is a CPU cable as an EPS 12 volt cable we have another C Sonic prime power supply and what we're gonna do is just test that cable from the other C Sonic prime it's an older model and see if it's compatible with the power supply this came off of because I'm missing a CPU cable for that one so we're just gonna try and see between this between the other C Sonic power supply can we find a cable that'll fit this key and that has the same wiring internally so this is the other test bench we've got a C Sonic power supply on this one it's it's the same model but a different year of the model so we need another EPS 12-volt cable and I've got two hanging out of here so I can just pull one of these and then we're just gonna label this to make sure it doesn't get mixed in with the other one during testing and then we can test it so here's what you need to do first for the other cable that you pull out of a known power supply or something like that we've labeled it just so it doesn't accidentally get mixed with this one and then kill a test system so we have our two cables the key is the first they need to check so if the key matches the key is just the actually we can show it easier on the mod mat over here so this is a PCIe pen this is an EPS 12 volt and one side is standardized that would be the side that connects to the device the side that connects to the power supply is not standardized for various reasons which we've discussed previously but that's the key you know you see the chamfered engine edges there you see a square square chamfered edges and that's how you can figure out if it's going to fit of course and if we match these two cables the key is in fact the same so it's a square square diagonal diagonal square square diagonal diagonal and then the same on the other side so these are actually compatible in so far as you could plug them both into the same unit that doesn't mean the wiring is compatible first sign of a problem the font is different so we know that it comes from a different power supply model or year and so now we need to definitely check to see if it works you can use a cheap multimeter for this we're just going to use a a resistance check so it's a continuity test and this is pretty easy to do we're also going to drought a diagram and draw the pin out on a paper so that we can figure out where everything belongs so this we're gonna connect one to ground and one over here for resistance test in okay so let's do a diagram just so I can keep track of everything okay so the pin numbers I wrote here there is an official pin number spec I did not follow that I just wrote them down so I could track what's why and what we're gonna do is is how you do you plug in your multimeter get it set up and you just pick a cable and figure out where does it go so we know it doesn't matter which end we're gonna stick one end in here on the power supply side of the 1300 watt C sonic power supplies cable so over here you'll see 0 L this just means that there's no continuity nothing's connected right now we're not even probed anywhere and what we're looking for is basically 0.0 0.1 0.2 you something like that so let's just check the cables we've got the power supply and let me orient this like my drawing so that would be like that and then we're gonna go with the pin number 4 as I wrote it out so we're checking that pin we're gonna check the top right which would also be my pin number 4 over here 0 L so these are not continuous so those aren't connected not continuous continuous so so if you see a number growing out of control that is not what we want we want is that right there zero point 2 so that's gonna be my pin number 4 versus my pin number 6 which I'm saying mine there because I do not follow spec for this so what we know is PIN forks nice - pin 6 on this one but we don't know and you can check the manual for this but we don't know what that is right now you could check I guess the the system side and see what is that cable and that is actually a ground right there on the system side so we do I guess we know what that is by way of looking at the spec for the system end so now it's test number three okay bottom left so that would be my opinion here here is one that is the it's a colored cable which we actually prefer although some people call them ketchup and mustard and don't like them they're useful because you can see what's actually what so the power supply end over here you can see there's a clip the clip aligns with my drawing like that and that would leave all of the bottom row is ground all the top row is 12 volt so just to prove a point how this works here's the cable that goes to the power supply when we did finally find the correct cable for the PSU and this is an important note so these don't have to match perfectly each time as long as on this cable we only have a 12 volt in the ground so as long as all the 12 volt goes to only 12 volt on the system side and all the ground only goes to ground then that's all that really matters so if you test the system side here in theory pin 7 should correspond with pen 2 based on our previous diagram and in fact it does not which would lead you to believe that oh this is the incorrect cable but as long as pin 2 goes to another pin on the bottom row so that could be 5 6 or 8 in our diagram and I just let go for a second so there's 7 by our diagram 5 6 8 this bottom row is all ground top rows all 12 volts so those don't match let's try maybe pin 6 is pintu and those are continuous so that would be 12 volt to 12 volt so that's fine we can still use this cable let's just make sure that remains true so it stabs pin 1 which should originally it went to pin 8 so it went to 12 volt so it's test pin 1 versus 1/8 and those are continuous this time so we're still good let's test we only need to test through 2 more so a pin 2 or a 3 rather pin 3 vs. pin 5 not continuous pin 6 our last hope here yes because 2 already went to 6 right so that connects to 7 so all the 12 volts so far is 12 volt we have one more to check that would be pin for as long as it matches something on the bottom yep 4 goes to 5 so what we've learned then the pin out is different on this cable even though it should come from the same exact power supply but 12 volt only ever goes to 12 volt ground only ever goes to ground which we know because of the the pin out diagram on the mod mat which if you want to buy that because you think can be useful it's on stored I Cameron's axis net to pick up the mod mod I'm working out here so the pin out match is in so far as the the voltage is go to the right play the rails go to the right place so you 12 volts 12 ground to ground the pin itself is not exactly the same but the key is the same so we can use this power supply cable with this power spike cable even if they come from different units although I believe these two came from the same one they just got mixed up in the jumble of other cables so that's that's good way to check your pin out and cable compatibility so there's a pretty easy way to validate if a cable from a pile of cables will match the power supply you're trying to find a cable for as noted it's really it's not about the pin out or the the wire path being exactly the same pin one doesn't need to go to pin 7 in this EPS 12 volt diagram we did it just needs to go to 5 6 7 or 8 and then as long as the rest of the pins follow that same path where all the 12 vote goes to only 12 volts in an EPS or a little cable and all the ground only goes to ground then you're fine you can use the cables assuming the keys match and then the same idea applies for other cables keep in mind that you might have a 5-volt line in there as well you might have a blank like this one has two blanks in it because it's a six pin header and it's only going to 4-pin molex so just make sure they match and you'll be good to go we have used this method in the past to find cables that got lost in just a pile and we need to match them back to their source power supply and we've also used it in the past to mix and match power supply cables safely from different power supplies as long as the headers don't match because again it's the same suppliers for all the manufacturers so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always go to store it I Karen's Nexus net to pick up a shirt like this one which will be out soon as an out of stock and not available ever again and then the mod mat that we used is also on the store or you go to patreon.com/scishow cameras next to subscribe for more thank you for watching I'll see you all next time