In wiring a mother board up we used to worry about two connectors from the PSU to the motherboard. Now we have multiple connectors and sockets, feeding regulated voltages for special core and memory applications. And we are drawing heavy amps with giga-harddrives and dvd burners. We go gigamemory and have CPU's that require cooling arrangements that rival modern sculpture with convoluted heat sinks and multispeed fans. Cases are changing shape as the ordinary PC becomes a mediacenter with tuner cards and super audio, and we now have PCI express for replacement of the PCI bus that replaced the old AT bus. Now some of these bright manufacturers have gotten together and decided that they will provide connections for the additional power required. WE now face 24 pin and 20 pin main power connectors. We have motherboards with the familiar 4 pin Molex for extra power and we have a little receptacle on some that is a 4 pin, and in some cases an 8 pin for "More Power". Our video cards often require a direct infusion of power and add to the needed connectors on the PSU harness, or they require us to buy special adapters to create a proper harness. So now the question. Some of the PSU manufacturers comment on separate "power rails" to put voltage where it is needed. Yeah, I guess I would like to keep the CPU power and the memory power from being affected by a dvd burner, or harddrive operation. But though I buy retail boxed supplies and motherboards, I note little information to tell me how to best utilize these new connections and power rails. Okay the SATA connectors are a no brainer. But what about that 4 or 8 pin mother board connector? I am currently building a mediacenter with the ASUS board and a Sapphire PCI express 800 GTO. The 800GTO has no connector for auxillary power in. I have a Squarish 4 pin connector from my Antec power supply that has the standard 4 pin motherboard connector. It goes into an 8 pin socket on the ASUS Mother Board that has a cover plug "to be removed if" you have an 8 pin plug from your power supply. I have an EZ power socket on the Motherboard that accepts a standard 4 pin Molex. That was the easy one! So now the question about this PCI Express graphics card that appears to grab all it's power from the PCI express socket. Do I have a place on my motherboard to plug in to power this Buss? And better yet, do I have one of those seperate power rails, that would be the place to draw power from? I've checked the Antec and ASUS sites but can't seem to get answers in the forums or tech available. Google searches bring up 100 page white papers but they don't specify who does what and how. Gear in Question: ANTEC OvertureII case with 450 PSU Sapphire 800GTO Fireblade PCI express Graphics Card ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe w/ wifi/TV Tuner option Intel 2.8 Dual Core processor 4 Gig SimpleTech Memory 1 Seagate 300 SATA for Boot / 2 maxtor 300 SATA for storage DVD Burner and a DVD w DVD-RAM cartridge capability The question may not be needed with my setup, but, if you had a power supply with a dedicated graphics card output, could you adapt it into the mother board on the 4 pins unused in that 8 pin connector? This assumes the voltages are all equal, and, if the pins in the 8 pin motherboard connector are dedicated circuits that won't "cross" the dedicated rails in the PSU. In my case, how do I insure that my ASUS motherboard is getting all the power my graphics card is consuming??? I don't know anything about this PCI express buss and so I'm hoping this card is not taxing the motherboard or power supply in using the standard connectors available. PS: The ANTEC OvertureII is a nice case to work with. But the power supply is "special". Non-standard fan and venting. With the ASUS board the front panel wiring can be rerouted for a neater setup by going through a small hole left over from metal stamping for a case reinforcement. The wiring will all fit thru without removing the headers from the wire. A sleeve grommet over the 3 cables routed through this "backdoor" protects the cables. They are a dual USB, a firewire and the front panel audio connections for headphones and mic. They nestle next to the removable 3&1/2 bay tray above the power supply. A protector over the cables keeps the case top slot keys from rubbing on the cable. A little GOOP glue keeps the wire protector in place away from the path of the top slot locks. Good Building tdccasny
hay i cant c a 8 pin power suppile on that board this is the board ur talking about isnt it? i can only c a 4 pin connector and it doesnt look like that card need additional power
From ASUS Web Site: ++++++++++++++++ Products Comparison Table Products P5LD2 Deluxe CPU / Chassis *2 / Power FAN connectors 24-pin ATX Power connector 4-pin EZ Plug 8-pin EATX 12V Power connector IDE LED connector, power LED connector Chassis Intrusion///////////// The "Deluxe" version has this connector. And 1394 onboard. The latest news is I have modified an Enermax supply to fit the case. (Antec supply was DOA). The fan was smaller, and had to cannibalize an old supply for an additional AC in socket. The Enermax has a "card" soldered to it's AC socket. By installing a 2nd AC socket and wiring across the inside of the supply, I was able to solder the new wires to the original AC input socket and card. The supply mounts upside down, so I had to mark for and drill holes to match. I acquired some popnuts (nutserts) to mount to the removable top of the Enermax PSU. Now when the PSU is assembled and placed in the Antec OvertureII chassis, the 4 mounting screws can hold the assembly securely. I fabricated a cover for the exposed AC pins with some plastic and affixed it over the unused socket. (This is inside the Antec case, but still "touchable"). The Enermax supply came with an adaptor for the 4 pin connector to an eight pin connector. I used this to "power" the 8 Pin EATX connector. Power up the new supply and everything came up and allowed me to install Media Edition. I have all the hard drives (Three 300G, and two DVDs active. No noticeable heating of the supply. Will gradually be working out some of the feature complications, "media center" doesn't want to recognize the ASUS TV card and there is that other two gig of memory. The Panasonic multidrive DVD DVD-RAM drive doesn't show up properley in the XP part of Windows, well, you know, the hunt to find all the latest drivers, and then maybe uninstalling and reinstalling driver packages and hardware until everything is happy with each other. The biggest problem now is the noise generated by the CPU cooler. The ASUS mother board and Intel Fan assembly have a 4 pin fan connector. (The MB connector is molded staggered so a 3 pin connector can be used for a non "speed controlled" CPU fan) I can imagine that the particular setup I have would allow for another 2 inches in height on the CPU heat sink. I guess I can look for a "tall boy" on-line. The CPU fan is the noisiest of all the fans (2 in PSU, 3 in case and one on Sapphire 800 GTO). Sapphire 800 GTO fireblade occupies an express slot and on this ASUS motherboard blocks access to a PCI slot. This may be a consideration for some of you, and should be taken into account if you are going with a motherboard that requires cards installed for features you want. You might just need that slot! The question is still on the idea of power supplies having seperate regulation for different voltages, and in the case of the PCI-Express video cards, they get the power they consume from somewhere. If we are using all these 12 volt busses, and they are separate in the mother board, it would be better to have a power supply with separate regulated feeds to these individual busses. The fact that a video card has no clip on power leads doesn't mean it's not a big power hog. If it gets it's power through the new slot, that new slot better have a way to get the power demanded to the card. I guess to go back to my original question "why is it so hard to find out from these manufacturers what should go where." Stakddek
