[SOLVED] PSU amazing wires/pins

drjackool

Distinguished
Dec 5, 2013
284
1
18,795
Hi
Why in PSU on 24pin cable some wires are duplicated for example ground or other voltages but them are connected together inside the PSU pcb.
PSU-PinOut.jpg


Why these wires is not single for each and make this wide 24 pin ugly cable to tiny cable?!
You may say PSU may provide for each wire separated voltage source but I think all PSU in the world never do that! (Just may only for 12V for GPU/CPU and not for 24pin cable)
Thanks
 
Solution
The simple answer is because the connector pins are current limited from being jammed so closely together. While it would be easy to simply use thicker wires to deliver more amps, the limit of the connector means it would be pointless to do so, and just about everyone only uses 18ga wire for these.

While technically a 0.093" pin and socket is good to 11A by itself (and so is 18ga wire), putting 2 rows of 12 of them together limits cooling enough that the current rating drops to 6A per pin in order to limit temperature rise

For similar reasons, more than half the pins of a modern CPU socket are dedicated to power and grounds. The pads can obviously only handle a very limited current each, and as CPU voltage drops toward...

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
If you make your own cables you can do away with the double wires. I've done my own cable sleeving and made custom wire harnesses for my mods/builds/projects. If you can solder, you can literally do away with the double wires and refine the end result of the 24pin cable running from the PSU to the motherboard/component.
 

drjackool

Distinguished
Dec 5, 2013
284
1
18,795
If you make your own cables you can do away with the double wires. I've done my own cable sleeving and made custom wire harnesses for my mods/builds/projects. If you can solder, you can literally do away with the double wires and refine the end result of the 24pin cable running from the PSU to the motherboard/component.
I need technical answer
 

Vic 40

Titan
Ambassador
Saw this weak an interview with Jon Gerow from Corsair and he talked amongst other things about redundancy regarding gpu's and power connectors, but that might apply here also, having just one connection and it fails and you are in trouble, have more and you have some "back up".
 
The simple answer is because the connector pins are current limited from being jammed so closely together. While it would be easy to simply use thicker wires to deliver more amps, the limit of the connector means it would be pointless to do so, and just about everyone only uses 18ga wire for these.

While technically a 0.093" pin and socket is good to 11A by itself (and so is 18ga wire), putting 2 rows of 12 of them together limits cooling enough that the current rating drops to 6A per pin in order to limit temperature rise

For similar reasons, more than half the pins of a modern CPU socket are dedicated to power and grounds. The pads can obviously only handle a very limited current each, and as CPU voltage drops toward 1v the pads on the bottom will have to transfer some 100-200A to deliver 100-200w. One side effect of all this redundancy is often many pins can be damaged while the system continues to work normally, if you get lucky and only power or ground pins got damaged.
 
Solution