Getting To Know Your Power Supply

Before we move on to the next step, let's take a moment to know what are some of the different connectors found on the power supply. Not all of the power connectors shown here are found in every modern power supply units. However, we hope that this little tutorial will help beginners understand more about the various types of connectors found with their power supplies and what they are used for.

This is the compulsory 20-pin ATX power connector that is needed to power the motherboard and all of its other components.

This is the ATX12V power connector that most modern motherboards require. It's used to power most modern high-speed processors and in some rare cases, it's used with AGP Pro ports.

This is the AUX (auxiliary) power connector that some older Pentium 4 motherboards require. It's seldom used in Athlon-based systems. It's used in most high-end server boards, especially dual processor systems.

This is the popular Molex four-pin power connector that's used with most devices such as your optical drives and hard disk drives. It's also used with some high-end graphics cards, Firewire cards and casing fans.

This is the smaller 4-pin power connector that is normally used to power floppy disk drives. It's also used with certain graphics cards, Firewire cards, Gigabyte's 3D Coolers and the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro.

This is a recently introduced power connector used specifically only for SATA hard disk drives. Most motherboards provide a converter cable for this power connector, so it's not a compulsory requirement yet. However, it's handy to have it included with the power supply unit.

Certain power supply units will provide fan power connectors such as these. You can see that there are only two wires connected to these four-pin Molex connectors. Use these with casing fans only and do not connect them to other devices such as optical and hard disk drives. This is an optional power connector.