Hey guys, first of all, I would like to know if Secondly I am using a single rail power supply. There are alot of different cables such as ones specifically for PCI and such. If I do not use these and only use one cable to connect all my devices through adapters/splitters, will this have a negative affect? Thanks
It depends what you connect, but in general you shouldn't really worry as most lights and fans don't take up a huge amount of Amps. Bolded just in case.
nice, thanks. So I can assume that I can't do this if I want to power all my hard drives and graphics card, disc drives through cable by using splitters and adapters? Also, any ideas on the first situation?
It would be a bad idea to connect all your devices together for a number of reasons. Wires and Connectors have resistance, when current passes through a resistance the voltage drops, more wire = bigger voltage drop, more current = bigger voltage drop. By using a single string of adapters you're drawing the maximum current through the most connectors = Biggest voltage drop... The energy lost through the voltage drop shows up as heat which could melt wires/connectors and will certainly make the case hotter. Many PSUs have separate voltage rails of the same voltage, the power rating of the PSU is dependant on the load being distributed between the different rails. Using only one rail would most likely overload that rail and joining rails is problematic at best, they're never at exactly the same voltage so one would try to drive the other causing all sorts of problems. Having said that you can run more than one device from each set of wires. My PSU came with three or four cables each with two or three SATA power connectors on. In order to tidy up the wiring in my case and because my HDDs are in a rack close together, I took the connectors off a couple of the cables and added them to another giving me one cable with five SATA power connectors on similar to what you've shown in the left hand image. I've had no problems with it so far, however, HDDs are pretty low powered devices, I wouldn't advise doing it with graphics cards or the motherboard power connectors. Moriquendi Edit: Electrically the first diagram is identical to the second (for these purposes)
