Which leads where? First time with a modular power supply.

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

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I'm just in the process of building my new PC and it's been a good while since I did anything with power supplies and I've never dealt with some of the newer things like multiple PCIe sockets on GPUs, I've also never used a modular PSU before either so I'd like a little guidance if I may

Motherboard lead
whTAsoLl.jpg


This one I'm ok with, the two plugs go into the two sockets they're next to in the PSU and the big one the other end goes on the motherboard.

CPU lead

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This one I feel reasonably confident with, one end plugs into one of the PCIe/CPU sockets on the PSU that sit below the big motherboard socket, the other end goes into ATX12v1 on the motherboard

I have a second one of these CPU leads, and I think I'm right in thinking I could plug it into the other CPU socket on the PSU and then split the other end and put the resulting 4 pin plug into ATV12v2 on the motherboard but this is optional and more if you are planning on doing power hungry overclocking etc? I'm not going be doing anything like that so I don't need to use this second lead right?

GPU leads
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Now this is where I'm a little less certain. I have two PCIe leads with the PSU which have a solid 8 pin plug at one end which I can see goes into one of the PCIe sockets on the PSU (next to the smaller SATA sockets) what I'm a it unsure about is the the other end. This goes into a 6+2 pin plug and then in a y configuration into a second 6+2 pin plug. The GPU I have is a 6750XT and has two 8 pin sockets on it. Can I just use one of these PCIe leads and simply plug in both of the 6+2pin plugs into the GPU? I'm guessing that's ok, in the same way as you used to have molex leads with two or three connectors along it's length so you could power two or three devices, same with SATA?
 
One lead is probably ok yeah, your PSU manual will tell you what to do. Depending on PSU even if you used the 2 separate leads it might all be from the same rail anyway.

I've a 6750XT with a 650W NZXT PSU and only use 1 lead with no issues, I did it for cable management sake.
 
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valve90210 said:
Now this is where I'm a little less certain. I have two PCIe leads with the PSU which have a solid 8 pin plug at one end which I can see goes into one of the PCIe sockets on the PSU (next to the smaller SATA sockets) what I'm a it unsure about is the the other end. This goes into a 6+2 pin plug and then in a y configuration into a second 6+2 pin plug. The GPU I have is a 6750XT and has two 8 pin sockets on it. Can I just use one of these PCIe leads and simply plug in both of the 6+2pin plugs into the GPU? I'm guessing that's ok, in the same way as you used to have molex leads with two or three connectors along it's length so you could power two or three devices, same with SATA?
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It is not generally recommended (i.e. use 2x separate cables if possible), but you can do that and it should be fine.
 
Thanks, if I could use just the one that would obviously be neater in the case but I'll probably go with two then if it's better.

Is my thinking on both the motherboard and CPU leads right? Just want to be sure before I plug things in...
 
Your motherboard will tell you if you need both plugged in, not gonna do any harm to plug in more rather than less, you'll just have to cable manage a bit better :)
 
The motherboard manual only mentions ATX12v1 in the setup instructions. Further back in the manual it mentioned ATX12v2, saying it is optional but is recommended for advanced overclocking.
 
Looks like you don't even need the 4pin for that board (?) Again it won't do any harm to plug it in but you only need the 8pin for CPU power on that board/cpu combo
 
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