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  • Power question?

    From Ginchy@admin@INVALIDthebdhers.com to uk.comp.homebuilt on Tue Dec 2 18:56:38 2025
    From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

    There is a molex socket on my P9X79WS motherboard it's intended for
    providing extra 12v power if you are using 3 vga cards here is the
    description in the manual.....

    "EZ Plug connector (4-pin EZ_PLUG)
    This 4-pin connector is for HDD power supply plug. When using 3 or more graphic cards, more power may be needed, Use this connector to enhance power by 12V."

    Would this help me when using 15 hard drives?

    I am using a 24 port sata card but I can only ever get a total of 10 drives working at once

    8 from the sata ports on the mb
    4 from the sata pci-e card even though I have 7 plugged into it at the
    moment

    My PSU is a Corsair CX750 which should be enough but as I say I can only
    ever get a total of 10 going so would this EZ plug connector help me if I
    fed it a molex?

    Does it "generally" provide more power or is it specific to graphic cards?

    Thanks


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  • From Theo@theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk to uk.comp.homebuilt on Thu Dec 4 15:01:25 2025
    From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

    Ginchy <admin@invalidthebdhers.com> wrote:
    There is a molex socket on my P9X79WS motherboard it's intended for providing extra 12v power if you are using 3 vga cards here is the description in the manual.....

    "EZ Plug connector (4-pin EZ_PLUG)
    This 4-pin connector is for HDD power supply plug. When using 3 or more graphic cards, more power may be needed, Use this connector to enhance power by 12V."

    Would this help me when using 15 hard drives?

    No, it's an input to the mobo so it can provide more power to the PCIe connectors. GPUs are allowed max 75W without external power connections, but that can be hard to provide from the other power connections.

    I am using a 24 port sata card but I can only ever get a total of 10 drives working at once

    8 from the sata ports on the mb
    4 from the sata pci-e card even though I have 7 plugged into it at the moment

    Is that a card with 24 genuine ports, or a 4 port card with a bunch of port multipliers hung off of each one? Port multipliers can be bad news, not
    least because all your drives are then sharing on 6Gbps SATA channel: https://forums.truenas.com/t/multiply-your-problems-with-sata-port-multipliers-and-cheap-sata-controllers/1504

    What chips does this card have on it?

    My PSU is a Corsair CX750 which should be enough but as I say I can only ever get a total of 10 going so would this EZ plug connector help me if I fed it a molex?

    I very much doubt your problem is anything to do with power to your SATA
    card. Does your card have a big heatsink on it like a GPU? If not, it's likely not drawing enough power to cause any issues.

    Does it "generally" provide more power or is it specific to graphic cards?

    It's not fussy about what kind of cards, but it likely mainly beefs up the
    12V PCIe power. Many simple cards are 3.3V only and so it won't make a difference to them (unless the mobo has an additional regulator to generate more 3.3V).

    Theo
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