Comment by SmasherEpilepti
16 hours ago
Recently, I was screwed by my big box of cables, when I pulled out a SATA power connector for my modular power supply, and learned very quickly that though the ports universally fit across modular PSUs, the pinouts are not actually intercompatible, and you can and will fry your hard drives.
I didn't know this; I had foolishly assumed that SATA power connectors were standardized on both ends.
Modular PSU cables never go in the big box. They go back in the PSU box if I'm being smart. Then I know which PSU they came from and can throw them out in ten years along with the PSU itself.
(I'm rarely smart and have a second big box of modular PSU cables that I maybe ought to get rid of.)
They aren't even consistent within manufacturer!
They're standardized on the device side, but not the PSU side. So always check pinout before you make the very reasonable assumption that if it fits it works
> They aren't even consistent within manufacturer!
Especially if the "manufacturer" is just a reseller.
A PSU cable tester is valuable for this. They're much cheaper than a replacement PSU, and you can plug in cables wherever they fit on a PSU, and test whether the output is correct for the CPU/PCI/motherboard/SATA connector you want to plug it into. The PSU and cable might be a black box, but the output is always testable.
Couldn't you still fry a PSU if the cable assumed multiple common pins to the PSU, but the PSU had different voltages across those connectors?
At least for the layouts listed here: https://pc-mods.com/blogs/psu-pinout-repository
The motherboard cables do all kinds of different scary crossovers so never separate them, though you'll probably never have an "extra" motherboard cable in the first place.
None of the other cables bridge pins on the PSU side, they "just" scramble the pins they're attached to at the other end.
That's an expensive mistake to make, though frying your HDDs is usually a lot cheaper than frying your GPU.
It's seriously annoying that this is the case though. Unless you kept the cables in the original package or in a labelled container, you cannot safely use them again if you owned more than one modular PSU.
It wasn't actually very expensive in money, because I was still able to RMA the pair of fried drives, but it did cost me $30 in shipping, a month of waiting, a lost delivery via UPS, and tons of time dealing with customer support for both UPS and Seagate to actually get a second set of replacement drives.
On the bright side, the actual replacements that eventually got to me were both 2TB bigger than the originals. They didn't tell me about this, so I'm not sure if they silently upgraded me to apologize for the wait, it was an accident, or they happened to be out of stock and just grabbed the next size up.
You destroyed the drives by using an incompatible cable (I.e. clear user error) and they still sent you (upgraded) replacements? That is unusual.
1 reply →
Before you fry a whole 12bay drive array and backplane let me tell you this:
6 pin EPS and 6 pin PCIe power cables are not the same. Even though the connector may fit they are not the same pinout.
Looks the same? Should be fine.
uh oh
I too have been burned by the BBOC, although not as badly as this:
I picked out a random short ethernet cable that looked nice (it was flat) to connect my wifi AP to my router.
It took me about a month to realize my 100mbit internet connection had dropped down to about ~85-90mbit, but more importantly, transferring files between a wifi client and the wired network was also only ~90mbit.
Turned out the cable was so bad that it only connected at 100mbit...
I have now gone the other way and I actually curate the BBOC: All cables I get for 'free' with random appliances now go straight to the bin (unless they are specialised) and I only keep cables I specifically bought and know they adhere to a standard.
Yeah, same cables but different specifications is a danger; I've got old HDMI / DP cables for example, they're backwards compatible and still fit into modern systems of course, but won't do 4K / 144 hz (or whatever).
One day I'll sort the box out. There's even SCART and PATA cables in there, as well as my old diskette holder.
...I should try and build myself a vintage PC sooner rather than later. Mind you, my dad got rid of all our old shareware diskettes years ago, unfortunately.
I had the same thing happen to me when I plugged in my massager charger into the blood pressure monitor and fried it
Oh for crying out loud, I've spent my life believing if it fits it's right. %$@&#!
I hope you never have to work with serial D9 cables. The variation of pinouts for legacy equipment is massive! Pretty sure every theoretical variation became some standard.
Hah there was one on the 8088 I was allowed to play with as a child, but I only used the parallel port to switch on/off a motor via a relay.
Right? And people say assembling a PC is just like LEGO!
I'm lucky so far that I've kept all the cables from all the PSUs I've had, and they matched in colour per PSU, so I've never had the temptation to pick a random one. Phew, saved by autism.
Better to learn from my experience than yours.