How do you switch a computer on?

I'm talking about the one which only has 2 wires going into it and plugs into the front panel. Hard drive ones have more.

Is it a three pin connector that only has two wires. If it's what I think it is you plug it into a fan connector on the motherboard. It lets you monitor the speed of the PSU fan via the BIOS (or there are tools that let you do it from windows).

EDIT: On modern PCs the power switch is connected to the motherboard not the PSU. The only reason you'll have a connection going to the front panel from the PSU would be to power a fan. Old pre ATX PCs (and the last ones would be early pentium 2s) did have the power button wired back to the PSU, but this was fairly easy to spot since it was a double insulated 240 volt cable.
 
Last edited:
Nah. I'm starting my board with the onboard button, were it absent Id have a screwdriver next to the case.

What never seems to come up in threads like this is 'power on by usb mouse/keyboard' and the like. Considerably preferable to the screwdriver is clicking a button on the mouse when it's turned off and watching it come to life. I know not all boards have this feature, but quite a few do
 
What never seems to come up in threads like this is 'power on by usb mouse/keyboard' and the like. Considerably preferable to the screwdriver is clicking a button on the mouse when it's turned off and watching it come to life. I know not all boards have this feature, but quite a few do

Mine only works with this feature if it's had a soft restart, cold boot and it wont work at all.
 
to turn it off u can hit the pwr jumpers agian, same as u did to turn it off or switch off PSU, or just shutdown normally in windows. I tried using keyboard (enabled via bios) to switch mine on but it doesnt like it thru usb (or usb ->PS/2 converter) so had to reset the cmos as it disabled the pwr sw jumpers :mad:
 
Even with a case i have my bios set to turn on by pressing the 9 key, works nicely with my USB kb. If this is going to be remotely long term Google "ATX Control Kit" which will make things a little easier for a fiver. Personally I think I'd scavenge a momentary switch from something and wire it up to a spare pin header cable.
 
Back
Top Bottom