I’ve been running my self-built desktop computer for a few years now on the motherboard’s native graphics processor. For a few reasons, I’ve decided to get myself a low-end video card. I bought myself a Powercolor Radeon 570 4GB card, which arrived today.
The card requires an 8-pin connection to the PSU. My PC is running an EVGA Gold 550W G2 power unit, and the two VGA 8-pin connectors (seen in bottom-left of this image) are currently free.
My problem is that I can’t find my 8-pin connector. There were spare connectors that came with the PSU that I didn’t need during the build, so I put them aside. We just moved house, however, and now I can’t find them. Either they’re buried somewhere in a box that I haven’t yet unpacked, or I accidentally tossed them during the pre-move cleanup.
I just wanted to check that I can buy a 8-pin to 8 (6+2) pin, male to male connector, and that will do the trick, right? Something like this? I know it’s a noob, question, but when it comes to graphics cards, that’s what I am.
VGA connector? Do you mean PCI Express? Because if so then yes, it’s fine. The two extra pins are just ground pins; the 8-pin version is rated to provide 150 watts, while the 6-pin version is officially 75 watts.
Yes, it’s a PCI-E slot, but as you can see from the linked image, the actual empty sockets on the PSU itself say VGA1 and VGA2. Nowhere on the PSU does it say PCI-E.
they’re not sense wires; the +2 are an additional +12VDC and GND pin. it’s so you can plug the 6-pin portion into a card with a 6 pin header, or gang the 6 and 2 pin plugs together and plug them into a card with an 8-pin header.
why they didn’t just settle on 8 pin headers is beyond me. if the card needs 8 pins or fewer, use one 8 pin. if it needs more than 8 pins, use two 8 pin headers. the literal pennies of difference can’t be that important.
Not true. The two additional pins are both grounds, and used essentially in a sense capacity: they indicate that the wire gauge and power source are enough to support the full 150 W. Some cables have the extra pins on a higher gauge, and connected to each other–they aren’t carrying significant extra current. They would be limited by the current capacity of the three +12VDC wires anyway (without going to a lower gauge, that is).
To the OP: there is absolutely no standardization for PSU->VID cabling. Traditionally, there were no connectors on the PSU-side; it was all hard-wired. The better PSU makers started adding removable cables to keep things tidier, but when they did so they forgot to agree on a standard.
That said, if you buy a cable from the same brand, it is likely to work. So I suspect the EVGA cable you linked to will be fine.
I hope it works, because while EVGA might make great PSUs at decent prices, they are fucking highway robbers when it comes to cables. You can’t just buy a single cable from them; you have to buy a full set. And the set of cables costs about the same as the original PSU that came with all the cables.
II found a single cable on eBay, and I’ve ordered it. But EVGA only sells sets, as far as I can tell from their website. And, as I said, a full set is almost the same price as a complete kit of PSU and cables.
They do sell smaller, “additional” sets for the larger PSUs, like this one. According to their compatibility tab, this set of cables only works for the 1600W PSUs, but I’m guessing that they would probably work for my PSU as well. Is that the case?
It will very likely work, but I won’t say it’s certain: PSU makers can’t even standardize their own cabling. We have piles and piles of these cables at work, from a half-dozen different makers. I needed a cable for one PSU, and thought I found it in a pile–and it turned out that even though the cable was from the same manufacturer as the PSU, and even though it had the right markings (SATA cabling), and even the same goddamn connector (or at least one that didn’t violate the key constraints), it was the wrong cable. And it would have fried any drive that I plugged into it because the wiring was all reordered.
It wouldn’t hurt to do a little sanity check on the cable even if it plugs in successfully. Do you have a multimeter?
Not that it matters to the OP, but since this GQ I have to issue a small correction:
One of the extra two pins is a sense pin. The other is a real ground pin. Of the 6 pins on the 2x3 connector, three are +12V and two are real ground pins. The last is another sense pin.
Depending on which sense pins are connected, the card can distinguish between no connector, 75W, or 150W. For 75W, the current-carrying pins are 3x12V/2xGND. For 150W, it’s 3x12V/3xGND.
