Confused as to which cables i need for SSD and HDD

Marc2180 · 22 Nov 2018 at 11:38

I just upgraded my rig with a new mobo, cpu, ram and a SSD. Before all i had was a 1TB HDD, the cable for the HDD was one that had wires coming out of it going to a 4 pin MOLEX. which is connected to a cable coming out the PSU with 3 molex connectors on it. Can i just use the same cable for the SSD that was on the HDD or do i need a different cable for the SSD? the motherboard came with some sata cables but from what i can tell they are only the data cables and not power cables.

Can somebody point me in the right direction for what cable i need to connect up the SSD if it cant use the optical SATA/power cable?

Marc2180 · 22 Nov 2018 at 11:42

joey1211 said:
If there are no SATA power cables on the PSU, you'll need a new one. Or buy some 4pin MOLEX > SATA converters to use with your existing PSU.

Its a modular PSU but it was second hand off a friend so don't have any sata power cables which i believe are 5 pin?

Marc2180 · 22 Nov 2018 at 11:43

the PSU is a coolermaster 850w gold 80+

Marc2180 · 22 Nov 2018 at 11:48

I can't seem to find the right one

bremen1874 said:
If you can’t get hold of the missing cables (how did your friend manage to lose them?) then the molex adapters will be okay.

it was a 10 year old build, i bought the computer complete off of him, had an X58 mobo with i7 920 in it. The only part left of the original system now is the 1TB HDD and PSU.

Marc2180 · 22 Nov 2018 at 11:49

are the cables PSU specific? the SATA power connection on the PSU is about the size of a molex but 1 pin wider.

Marc2180 · 22 Nov 2018 at 11:54

bremen1874 said:
The modular cables for the psu are specific. Don’t risk using cables that aren’t guaranteed to be correct.

Ok. The cable coming out of the PSU that the HDD was connected to just had 3 molex connectors on it so i'll just buy a sata power connector with a molex on it and connect it to that along with the other drive. Thanks for your help.

Marc2180 · 23 Nov 2018 at 14:57

got my molex-sata power cable this morning (super quick delivery by OCUK only on Royal Mail 2nd class! so the 1tb hdd had my OS on it before, which is now on the SSD. Will it cause any issues when i plug the HDD in? I presume it will boot as normal from the SSD and i'll be able to format the HDD in windows?

Marc2180 · 23 Nov 2018 at 15:04

bremen1874 said:
Try it and see. You aren't going to hurt anything.

Just wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to conflict anything before i plug it in. First time i have had a system with a 2 storage drives

Marc2180 · 23 Nov 2018 at 15:09

skyripper said:
It'll either boot from the SSD (nice and quick), or boot from the HDD (slow).

If its from the SSD, no action needed.
If its from the HDD, reboot, go into the BIOS and change the boot order so the SSD is picked up first.
Then you can do what you like to the HDD.

i'll plug it in and smash F12 to bring up the boot options first and make sure the SSD is the primary boot