Gadgetory

hey Ron today we're putting out a PSA public service announcement about modular cables on modular power supplies and how to avoid making mistakes that could cost you so I'm joined by Patrick stone here he's helped me at the site for a number of years now behind the scenes and at CES things like that Patrick you helped me understand a bit better previously some of the concerns with modular power supplies I think we can go over that today so first question that we should talk about why don't we mix and match cables between modular PS use yes so it's kind of tricky in that a lot of PS use like to use the same actual connector so let's take a standard manufactured PCI Express connector so inside the power supply is the female version of that connector and on the end of the cable is the male version of that connector but then on one manufacturers cable the red and the yellow and the black are in one spot and then on the other manufacturers cable they kind of switch it up right you got to look out for that kind of stuff and that's because cables actually are standardized so this is a question that I kind of saw posted there's there's two different ends of the cable right and one end side that you may have that plugs into your molex your SATA your PCIe devices the CPU power on the motherboard 24-pin power those are standardized if you plug in a cable from any one of these PSU is on the table into a video card it will be the same I like to call that the device side right so device side we know what we don't necessarily know is the power supply side right and man those and so the crazy thing is a lot of the times you're not going to run into any trouble because you're gonna have some that have this narrow ishka nectar on it and then some that have this big fat wide right 3x3 connector on it and then you've got some that have a PCI Express connector on it I think the places where you get into the most trouble the places where I've seen the most mix-up is the molex style connector and the PCs PCI Express stock connector those are the peripherals in general - because SATA uses generally the same as molex so in this specific instant instance I've got two cables from two different power supplies this is a silverstone cable it goes to this power supply mm-hmm this is an EVGA one and they even have the same you know they're not sleeved differently in use so really the the problem here is if we just look at the ends of these cables the wires aren't in the same place so if I plug this into the silverstone cable or into power supply EVGA into silverstone what we end up with is in this instance yellow and red are in two completely different spots yeah not good and it depends I haven't tested this and plotted it out specifically so the damage may vary or may even not be visible depending on the device you plug in and that's because when you're plugging in devices to power supply to a cable they use different voltages right so fans the fan we have on the table and we'll talk about the coloring in a moment there's a 12-volt fan we can see that by looking at the label yep that's 12 volts this only cares about 12 volts and ground so if you plug in something like a let's let's say like a fan maybe a fan hub but a controller of some kind Corsair controllers things like that the controller may be a different voltage it may be the same it could be 12 it could be 5 and if it's 5 volts and you plug in a 12 volt device then you don't have an expected result necessarily yeah yeah I mean it's so really the way I think about it is you've got three possibilities your first possibility is you get really lucky and the different manufacturers cables match up right it could work fine the second possibility is the cables are in the wrong spots so you have incomplete circuits which means no current flow once again pretty lucky right yeah there no damage nice to say yeah third possibility is red is where yellow should be yellow is where red should be orange is where black should be and we have reverse polarities over currents over voltages all kinds of bad and right feeds into other components power supply and maybe protections in the power supply or and whatever component usually are right but they will only protect you so much and it's when you're mixing and matching specifications there's no guarantee that anything works like it should that's exactly right because it's not designed to handle it so there are different voltages coming out of the power supply generally a 3.3 12 v and and then your black cable as well as you can see here those need to line up I guess when in doubt check the manual yes oh absolutely read your documentation if your power supply has a label on it just make sure you read the label if you have a little manual I mean I like to think that people that are doing what we do people that like to build systems are usually pretty intelligent people and you know take take five minutes read the five page manual and it just to a point here it may not be in there what specific pin layout is in the power supply because they might why would they define it because they sell you the thing and you're supposed to use their cables with their thing good point so if that's the case and you're like where did this cable come from I think it came from the one I'm using if you think that stopped like we get rid of it now if you really need that cable you can check yes right you can do a continuity check and see see if the pins align and if they do then hey maybe it was from the power supply you were about to put it in yeah absolutely and if when he said continuity check the thing to use multimeter right here you can even you can even do some other types of testing which he's shown in some earlier videos were for a couple years yeah yeah and like then like you can you can trick a power supply into turning on and you could even do like voltage checks to make sure that if you have a yellow wire you're getting 12 volts out of it while you're getting five volts out of them instead of some voltage that you're not supposed to be getting so multimeters can be a good check but like you said if you're not sure you stop yeah be patient you know analyze situation investigate what's going on yeah and multimeters we're after the tutorial here today on how to do a continuity check it's very easy I'm sure there's a million of them on YouTube just check you can back probe if you have to depend on the and out in back probe one end you probe the other end doesn't make a is it continuous and if it is then you know which which end of which cable on one end goes to which pin on the other end yep and that's what you need to know to know if something works so I think that covers the basics now quick cute FAQ type things to go through one of the common questions I've received is let's let's do this one first why are they not standardized on the power supply side they're standardized on the device side I think that goes back to the manufacturers saying to themselves hey this is our power supply we have provided you cables with it there's really no reason for us to have to be the same as other manufacturers is that kind of where you're coming from - yeah I think so there there is an argument to be made for standardization and it's mostly to protect the users but you have things like this one which I can't get out there yeah this is a universal header on this particular EVGA unit coincidentally not compatible with other EVGA units so even with it now obviously you can't screw this up this won't go in there but the point is even between the same vendor right there's no guarantee that one Corsair PSU to the next or EVGA or whomever it will transfer cables the reason for that is things like this where EVGA has said we're gonna sell it an expensive power supply it will have the universal headers they can plug in anywhere that's a feature we want to charge money for another option Rosewell off the top my head has an older power supply the a plug in the end and they've got LEDs around where the connector is so that's the thing they wanted to do so that's what reasons not standardized mm-hmm now next thing to talk about is the Keen so I saw some folks saying well you shouldn't be able to plug this into another one because they if you can and they keyed it wrong yeah it's not that's not true either that goes back to we talked about into the beginning of the video we were just talking hey these little connectors that you plug into the power supply what not not like this one for per se but like this one right here it's it's an off-the-shelf PCI Express connector and they're using those because they're inexpensive and easy to get all this sell them by the millions I'm sure is it's it's it's cheap why not you're putting it on one end already we will not put it on two ends and call it a day and now normally for a PCI Express cable you'll have eight pins going into the power supply and coming out you'll have maybe six or six plus two yep and four molex you'll have six out of the power supply and then your molex out at the other side yes but the point is that connect the plastic itself is the same yeah so there's nothing really to do with keene it's just that the why would you customize a special T and for your device and more expensive yeah exactly and you guys don't want to pay more for your stuff do you and some people do and if you do you have stuff like that where it's literally impossible to screw up yeah true but you also end up in trouble you know for other specific scenarios we won't talk about that but yeah I think that covers most of it I don't know is there anything else we should mention here that that's really it the only thing that I would like to say just to kind of sum everything up is this if you're working with a power supply and you plug everything in and then you hit the button and you feel like something's not right and it doesn't behave the way you want it to then time out hit the power switch on the back for good measure you got it and make sure it's shut down power down your unit check everything again you just spent a bunch of money all this computer equipment protect your investment check everything spend ten minutes checking everything again and then go back and try again and as a ten years ago I built my first system I remember missing a cable I think was an EPS 12-volt happens all right yeah and it's not a big deal if you're if you kind of stop and look at yeah that's what it can become a big deal exam so yeah stop and check if you ever have questions where you're like man this is pissing me off and frustrated I don't get it tweet at us at gamers and exes I'll try to help you out because that's what we're here for so yeah I guess it boils down to they really you should the cable shouldn't get mixed anyway to begin with agreed if they do because maybe you just don't know this is a problem or you have a million power supplies like we do and it happens try and figure out what's right otherwise get rid of it by another one straight from the manufacturer and then in the future throw your cables for each unit into a bag label the bag you know EVGA 750g 2l whatever organization always a good thing yeah it saves time later as we've learned here so I think that's it for now as always patreon link in the post roll video to help us out directly making more content like this and links in the description below for more information and pin out charts things like that that you've seen in this video subscribe for more we'll see you all next time you see anything out there they go to use my scopes