If you unplug your computer and open up the desktop case
and look inside, one of the largest boxes in there will be
a power supply.
It looks something like this.
And there will be a lot of cables coming out of the back
of that power supply with a lot of different types of
connectors on it.
Each one of these connectors correlates to another part of
your system, and in some cases, these connectors work
with each other to make sure your motherboard, your video
cards, and the other devices inside of your computer are
powered on properly.
The motherboard of your computer has probably one of
the largest power connectors that you'll find on your
computer system.
It's either a 20- or 24-pin power connector.
We used to just use 20, and as the standards increased and we
needed more power for our motherboards, we increased
this to be a 24-pin connector.
And even today, you can find some motherboard power
supplies that are set up with a 20-pin and an extra 4-pin
off to the side in case you need to use that power supply
in an older system.
There are many different voltages going through this
particular power connector, and it's very, very easy to
find it on your motherboard.
If you look at all the connections on your
motherboard for your CPU, and your memory, and your adapter
cards, you'll see a really large 20- or 24-pin connector
right on the motherboard.
It is one of the biggest connectors on that device,
very, very easy to find.
And that is where you would simply plug in that connection
directly from your power supply right into the
motherboard.
One of the most common power connection types is this 4-pin
power connection that we call a Molex connection.
The name Molex actually refers to the manufacturer of this
particular connection.
Molex is a very large organization that makes many,
many different types of connections, but because this
is the type that we found inside of our computers, it
now has this moniker of the Molex connector.
And what we're really talking about is
this 4-pin power connector.
You can see that it is slanted on one side of it, so that it
can only fit into a power connection that is
exactly that size.
And generally, you're using this to power types of
peripherals inside of your computer case--
storage devices, CD ROMs, and DVD ROMs.
Maybe fans might be connected to these.
We would be using these because they're such a very
common connection type for power inside of
the computer case.
As the capabilities of our motherboards increased, we
found we needed more power.
We had already increased the power connector
up to a 24-pin connector.
And so we started changing the standards to add different
types of connectors onto that.
One of these is a 4-pin.
This is for the ATX12 volt standard.
Sometimes you'll see this referred to as a P4 connector.
And it's really designed to give additional power along
with that 24-pin connection.
There is also an 8-pin connection.
This is from a standard called the EPS12 volt, an entry-level
power supply specification.
It was really designed for servers and devices that had
multiple processors and multiple cores in those
processors that needed a lot of power.
Those will have eight pins connected to it.
And you'll see them used in conjunction with that 24-pin
power connection on the motherboard.
The motherboard isn't the only thing that needs a lot of
power on our modern computer systems.
Our PCI Express slots occasionally have connections
on them that need more power as well.
And so we created this standard that provided both 6
pin and 8 pin PCI Express power, exclusively for those
adapter cards that were plugging into
the PCI Express bus.
And you can see, the 6-pin is a 75 watt.
The 8-pin is a 150 watt.
And if you're wondering what would need that much power on
a PCI Express, you've probably already guessed it's something
like a video card.
Today's video cards are extremely powerful.
They have multiple processors on them.
There's usually a fan connected to them.
A lot of power needs to go to these devices.
And if you look carefully at the very top of this
particular video card, you'll see those connectors are right
in the top.
So if you need additional power to your PCI Express
adapters, there's probably going to be a connector right
on the device card itself.
Simply look for that connection, and plug-in to
that power.
Our storage devices also need power.
And if you have a SATA drive, it may not necessarily be
using that 4-pin Molex connector that
we looked at earlier.
This particular SATA drive that I have is one the earlier
SATA drives that was in a transition period.
You could use the standard SATA power connection, which
is this connection on the far left of this view.
Or it also allowed you to use a Molex connector if that's
all you had in the power supply that you were using.
Today the newest SATA drives generally only have that
single SATA power connection.
And you can see, it is a very specific kind of connector.
There's nothing else on your computer that's going to be
using this.
And if you do have an older power supply that does have
that Molex connector, you might want to get something
like this device that will take a Molex connection coming
in and convert it into this SATA power so that you can
then power your hard drive.
If you have a floppy drive inside of your computer,
you'll notice that it has a very unique
connector on it for power.
This is a 4-pin connector.
It's relatively small.
And we have generically just called this the
floppy drive connector.
Sometimes you'll also hear it referred
to as a berg connector.
If we were to compare, for instance---
here is a CD-ROM drive and the big Molex
connector that's on it.
Notice that the power for the floppy drive, much smaller,
very diminutive in comparison.
Let's zoom up on that and have a look.
It's just a small 4-pen connection.
It does have a key on it with this connection on it, so you
can only plug the power in a certain way.
That makes it very, very simple to find that power
connection for the floppy drive and plug it right in so
that you have power going to the floppy drive connection.
Now that you can recognize some of these common power
connections, try unplugging your desktop computer, taking
the cover off, and seeing if you can identify all of the
power connections going to your motherboard and all of
the peripherals inside of your computer.