I have a PSU in a system in my house which i believe is 500watts but it only has 4 molex connectors 2 of which are used for dvd drives, one which has a Sata adapter on it connected to a Sata HDD and another with a fan attached. I want to add an extra HDD and i'll also have a case with a side fan powered by molex but i've got no extra connectors so I'm thinking of using one of many slightly older spare PSU's i have to give me extra connections and to provide extra power. How can i go about getting the extra PSU to work when its not connected into my motherboard and how can i get it to power up the same time as the main one. Cheers
At the most ghetto level, a paperclip bent into a U shape and used to bridge the green line (power on switch) to a black line (ground) on the ATX motherboard connector. That'll start the PSU up and you'd be able to power whatever you like from it. Personally I'd cannibalise some more molex connectors from another PSU and use them to extend the main one. You can buy molex adapters (take one molex connection and provide you with two) if you feel squeemish about getting in there with the wire stripper and soldering iron. You may also find that the case fan is unnecessary and that your computer runs cool enough without it. Fire up HWMonitor and find out.
I would recommend buying y-splitters. Here is a thread, however, that talks about hooking up two PSUs to one machine the right way.. http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=88976
Right now at stock settings doing basic web browsing and listening to music my computer runs fairly cool but it does get hot if i have set any overclocking on the CPU and/or do anything like heavy gaming so i use the fan at the back of the case to port the warm air out. I would love to try using a solder iron (sure we have one somewhere) but i'd need to get some practice in first otherwise i'd probably f**K it up. I guess i should just use a molex adapter for the time being until i'm confident enough to splice another PSU and use a solder iron.
