Question Can I use a 6-pin molex to sata power adapter to power a 3.5" hard drive?

[RagingFred]

Can I use a 6-pin molex to sata power adapter to power a 3.5" hard drive? The power supply doesn't have any sata power cables.

 

[USAFRet]

Can I use a 6-pin molex to sata power adapter to power a 3.5" hard drive? The power supply doesn't have any sata power cables.

What power supply is it?
Please be specific.

 

[geofelt]

Normally adapters are not good.
But, a 3.5 HDD is so low power that I would normally have no problem using an adapter.
The problem is that a normal molex power lead is 4 pins intended for aux devices.
It is a lead from the psu.
Your 6 pin molex is strange.

And, a 2.5" SSD will take even less power and be considerably faster.

 

[RagingFred]

From what I could find out it's a 500W SINGLE-RAIL ATX_12V - 8-pin PSU that is a proprietary Acer PSU.
It's in an Acer nitro 50-650.
Reason I'm bringing this up is that they have to sata connections on the motherboard, and 2 expansion slots in the case, but no sata power cables.....makes no since whatsoever.

 

[TerryLaze]

a proprietary Acer PSU.

Be very careful, it could have pins wired differently causing an adapter to fry your disk, if it has normal molex pinout then you need a 4pin molex to sata, if your PSU has 6pin molex it's not standard molex.

 

[RagingFred]

I found this image showing that the power (7) is on the motherboard, but I've never seen a connector like that before.

 

[DSzymborski]

Oof, yeah, this is extremely proprietary. I'd only replace a current SATA drive with the cable that connects to the motherboard and if that's not an option, then I'd only use another 3.5" drive in a USB external dock.+

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I would advise against using those adapters. Once worked on a pc where one of those had been used and the adapter caused a fire. It was a case with a silver aluminum inside and the connector on the back of the hard drive actually melted. The fire had been bad enough that there were black scorch marks inside the case.

 

[Math Geek]

https://ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=acer+sata+power+cable

this seems like the answer. the part number is "50.vmwd3" and these seem to be the item. i found genuine ACER parts but they run about $30, these are a lot cheaper. i assume these will work for a good bit cheaper.

i found the part number from this post on acer forum

https://community.acer.com/en/discu...-adapter-available-and-want-to-add-a-sata-hdd

 

[TerryLaze]

the connector on the back of the hard drive actually melted.

This can happen with any cable if it is not connected all the way, it can cause arcs and those can melt things.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Yes I worked on it after another pc repair shop had worked on it. It was a few years ago, looked like one they’d built and used a cheaper raidmax power supply. But again it was a basic pc, probably just a Pentium dual core of some kind.

 

[RagingFred]

Thanks for the help in figuring this out everyone. Reminds me of why I prefer to build my own. But I needed to upgrade 3 at the same time and these were on sale.