power connectors

Ruu_Old

building a new pc, and a bit puzzled bout all these power connectors hehe, what does the "M/B SW" connector mean?

leeroybrown

I would assume that "M/B SC" connector is referring to the ATX Power Connector connecting your PSU to the Board. There will only be one of these on your PSU. (Hard to miss)

The 4 pin "Molex" connectors make up the bulk of the connectors and are used to connect the Hard Drives, CD Drives, Zip drives and occasionally the Graphics Card (If you're lucky enough to have a 9700) to the PSU. They're easy to spot too.

There will probably be an AT Motherboard power connector on your PSU too. This will be obvious as it won't have any logical place to connect to.

There will also be a small 4 pin connector (perhaps 2 of them). These are for connecting floppy drives to the PSU.

The only other Power connections you'll find are the connections used from your motherboard to power Fan's.

Ruu_Old

sorry i misunderstood, its the little connectors at the front of the pc, the ones for the leds and stuff, really puzzling cos they are all different on each mobo.

vac

Find the motherboard manual and you'll find out which of them to stick where. Its normally a pretty simple diagram.

po0k

they're pretty important though, and afaik most ATX mobos won't boot if the core front panel connectors aren't hooked up right.

Again, as Vac said, RTFM.

Ruu_Old

its being a pain so maybe someone can be so kind as to help, ive tried some of it, but no joy. So ive attached a copy of the part im stuck on.
Now the connectors from the front of the pc are:

M/B SW (I have no idea where to put it)
RESET SW (that goes in the re id imagine )
HDD LED (plus and minus on it)
POWER LED (plus) and on the same line is a connector with (1) on it.

theres a bunch of others but i figured out they are for the usb at the front, thanks for your help in advance.
I hope im not doing something silly, does the pc need a fan to boot? cos im just building, i have everything but a fan.

milltown

First off, in case you didn't know, an LED is a diode. That means that it will only let current flow in one direction so you can't short anything out by connecting it arseways. The danger is if your terminals aren't insulated you could short across two terminals on the board while connecting them or if the wires are strained.

The hard drive is the easy one. Put the two wires onto the two connectors, if it doesn't light up when you boot up then reverse the two wires.

The power led should have three wires, one common and one each for red/orange light and green light. In my case the black was the common and I also had very self explanatory orange and green wires. From your diagram the P+ is the common so you can try the other two each way to get your LED lighting the way it should.

I think it may be a matter of preferrence whether you want your power switch to function as a reset or soft power switch, I suggest using the soft power option as very few PCs I have seen lately have more than one switch on the front.

The speaker connections are only necessary if your PC has a speaker mounted somewhere in the case, i.e. for beep codes on booting.

Green switch and green LED I'm afraid I have no idea about.

elmer

M/B SW is probably the only one you actually need to plug in - others would be nice to plug in too though

stick it on to pw as atx will only power on using a switch connected to the motherboard

the direct power on power off /4 sec delay(holding the power switch) is usually changed in the bios rather than on the board itself

green sounds like an energey saving thing

hope it helps

SouperComputer

mb switch is your power on the front. if you feel the need you can short the mins with metal to fire the board up

the other's are Lights (LEDS) the + - isnt a major thing. If its wrong, the light wont light. Generally if you put the plug on the jumpers with the wrigint facing the nearest edge of the board it should work.

Ruu_Old

thanks for all your help guys, tho i still havent had any luck with it. The last option is to bring it into a computer store and let them trick with it. Unless one of you guys want to come to me place some weekend and give me a hand with it, paid help of course

leeroybrown

Ah, now the meaning of the SW bit hits me.

M/B SW (I have no idea where to put it)
RESET SW (that goes in the re id imagine )
HDD LED (plus and minus on it)
POWER LED (plus) and on the same line is a connector with (1) on it.

Iff you find the relevant page in your motherboard manyal you should see the correct connections for the various leads from your case.

The MB S/W and POWER LED will need to be hooked up properly tro boot the PC. The Other two sets are not as such necessary to boot the PC but are needed for the relevant switches.

The best thing to do is sit down with the manual and go throught the full list of the pins on the connnector. Then pair these up with the relevant leads from your case. Then double check your list to be sure that you're right.

Check all your other connections to be sure that the problem isn't elsewhere.