ok im sure ya all know by now im not the electrical wizard, but i have a couple questions....ok im getting a new case and its a full tower, it has spots for 2 psu's and a 120mm fan at the top portionmy main question is this....i want to put in two psu's, one for my gear....and the other to power all my addition fans and lights in the case....now my question is this....how would i hook up the second psu to where it would come on with the main power switch, but only power the lights and fans without needing to be hooked up to the mobo.!

and my other question is this, i want to make sure my new rig has all the wire well hidden, and witha full tower its kinda rare to find a psu with long enough wires to hide them well....now could i just cut and add wire to the current wires and splice them together without any adverse effects? or would i need to do somethin special?

You ought to try using the forum search function.

Here are instructions on secondary PSU's:

http://forums.pcapex.com/showthread....l+power+supply

Here are some of my thoughts on neater wiring:

http://forums.pcapex.com/showthread....t=neater+wires

And yes you can absolutely splice in extra wire to make it happen.

Edit - screwed up my links

doh lol, i did a search, i musta been lookin up the wrong thing =P

ok so after reading your post about the psu's, i think going with the AT power supply is the way to go....luckily since i now work for a computer shop doing all the mods (luckily, no electric mods yet hehe), i have access to a whole crap load of old AT powersupplies..since atx's seem to present some ppossible problems....so the AT supplies i can run totally solo withoutbeing hooked to the MoBO or anything?

cause now that im really thinking on that subject, i think im gonna leave my main 3 fans hooked to my mobo, which arent lighted or anything, and just move my lighted fans and CC's over to the extra psu....that way at least if the secondary psu goes, i dont lose cooling power totally

thanks a bunch putwig.....i thought i remembered you saying before that wire length wouldnt hurt for cleaning up wiring in some other post

i know at psu's mount differantly...whats the best way to mount that additional psu in this case here?

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Last post before bed:

Just off the top of my head, I would say mounting above the current PSU makes the most sense. You will have to see what the fan placement is like on the AT you decide to use.

Why do you want a second PSU out of curiosity? If all you need to role over is a couple cathodes and a couple fans..........your primary PSU could probably handle those commponents, unless you are already pretty tight.

I use a secondary ..... but only because my primary is only a 300W. Something to think about.......

dude..dont add second PSU...get a good 400-500w, make sure it has an on/off switch on it....splice the purple wire and go to town....the purple wire provides power even when the mobo is off, of course, if u flip the switch on the back of the psu, anything on the purple wire will turn off too....get a volt-meter and check to see if its 5v or 12v tho....heak, u could prob put an inline switch....just ideas...

id say go with the AT idea.. you could make yourself a pretty nice switch to go with it...

well rite now ive got a enermax 350 on my main, and i have 4 CC's and i want to change out 4 of my fans in my tower that arent lighted to 4 that are lighted, as well as a thing or two else....and rite now ive got 4 fans, and all the rest of my gear running off the 350....im sure that if i was hook up the lighted ones and fill in the gaps, and hooking up the 3 other cc's id be pushin it....besides, i like the idea of having a seperate power source for all my non-essencial components, such as my lighted fans and CC's

im just gonna cut a hole in the back just above the 120mm fan, i dont have the case yet, its being shipped, but a friend of mine has the same case and i did some measurements, the at psu im getting should fit with about a 1/4 -1/6 in clearance between it and the 120mm fan below it....with ample room for everything else i wanna do

My main thing is i dont want to spend the cash on a 450w -500w psu when i already spent alot on my 350w....enermax's arent cheap, i can get a 300w at psu for free at work, so what the hell....at least if the at psu goes out it wont take my system with it =)

Are you sure about those measurements? Looks to me like you are going to have to lose the 120mm. What I would (did) do is mount the AT flush on top of the ATX PS, then you would have room for a pair of 80mm fans side by side on top.

Even a 350W power supply should be enough to power your computer, your mods, and anything else in between. Adding another power supply just for that purpose will really only just increase the noise and heat generated by your case.

ok so maybe i will give it a try first with my current PSU....i mean whats the worst that can happen....the auto kickoff will kick and and i have to unplug some **** rite?

theres a green wire on the atx connector, u connect that 1 wire to n e ground waire (black) on the atx and ur atx power supply turns on.. now to make it turn on at teh same time u need to buy a relay switch

What's the worst that can happen? You fry a PSU. I had matched PSU's that were working fine and out of nowhere one of them blew up. Both were 400W ATX's so I know it wasn't too much of a load, and all wires were soldered and insulated. Still don't know what happened. That's when I slapped an AT in.

I hooked my the green (pin 13, 14, or 15?) from the ATX connectors together, as long as both PSUs are properly grounded, hitting the swith on the case will make both PSUs fire at once, it works like a dream in my case, and I can easily remove it since I place a solderless connector on it. I only have 2 fans (the GPU and CPU coolers powered off my mobo, I pulled the molex leads from that PSU, and the second PSU is missing the ATX lead and powers all my components, it's a beautiful thing.

On the issue of it is needed, get ahold of an AMP clamp and strip the outter insulation from a power cord, loop the clamp around the green lead and do the math (I forget right now, too late) to determine your wattage draw. I was surprised how little power my system actually pulled.

Glad it is working for you Peng, and you brought up a good point. The wattage your system actually needs is actually pretty minimal. Even if you have several case fans, lights, a few drives, etc...after you add up the power consumption you will find that a 350W will handle it easily. The only real reason to upgrade PS's is if you have a component that sucks major juice, like a peltier. That was the reason I stuck the second PSU in. Since I yanked the pelt, my 430 doesn't even notice me anymore.

Ah, hell, if you want 2 PSU's then go for it. Figuring out how to make it work is the fun part.

i bought the non painted version of that case it says it will hold a 120 mm but it really only holds a 92 mm