psu wire color code

[jclark43]

When upgrading a psu is the color coding on the wires required to be identical to the original psu? Another words orange wire on pin1 red on pin2 etc need to match up?

 

[oczdude8]

When upgrading a psu is the color coding on the wires required to be identical to the original psu? Another words orange wire on pin1 red on pin2 etc need to match up?

no any psu you buy will work. the colour of the wires are arbitrarily chosen by manufactures based on what type of wire they had available for manufacturing. All psus have a standard and all the wires, regardless of colour do the same thing

 

[jclark43]

Why do they have orange as 3.3volts, red as +5 and yellow as 12v listed at the wiki psu web site? On this new supply I have when I plug into the socket I have a black going to where there was orange before. Does this matter? Am I going to smoke the motherboard?

 

[jclark43]

When upgrading a psu is the color coding on the wires required to be identical to the original psu? Another words orange wire on pin1 red on pin2 etc need to match up?

no any psu you buy will work. the colour of the wires are arbitrarily chosen by manufactures based on what type of wire they had available for manufacturing. All psus have a standard and all the wires, regardless of colour do the same thing

Why do they have orange as 3.3volts, red as +5 and yellow as 12v listed at the wiki psu web site? On this new supply I have when I plug into the socket I have a black going to where there was orange before. Does this matter? Am I going to smoke the motherboard? (Sorry if I have repeated myself, I am new to the program)

 

[oczdude8]

When upgrading a psu is the color coding on the wires required to be identical to the original psu? Another words orange wire on pin1 red on pin2 etc need to match up?

no any psu you buy will work. the colour of the wires are arbitrarily chosen by manufactures based on what type of wire they had available for manufacturing. All psus have a standard and all the wires, regardless of colour do the same thing

Why do they have orange as 3.3volts, red as +5 and yellow as 12v listed at the wiki psu web site? On this new supply I have when I plug into the socket I have a black going to where there was orange before. Does this matter? Am I going to smoke the motherboard? (Sorry if I have repeated myself, I am new to the program)

The colours are may be different on psu's. What motherboard do you have? how old is it? You can damage really old motherboards by connecting modern psu's to them, however if your mobo is less then 10 years old, it should be fine. I can tell you that the colour of the wires in my psu is different from that of Wikipedia, and its working fine.

also what is your new psu?

 

[smeezekitty]

The colors should match up. Make sure you aren't trying to plug it in backwards.

Sometimes the colors look a bit different in shade but they should be the same general color. You could smoke the board if its wrong.

 

[jclark43]

I have been into ham radio since the early 60s and this would be a "nono" but I know pc are suppose to be smarter than ham radios...lol I have a nice quad core HP pc and hate to take any chances; so I will look at other psu units to learn more. I do appreciate your help and thanks for responding.

 

[fil1p]

Hey,

In almost all cases all new PC's (build in the last 8 years or later) comply with the ATX standard. This means they use a 24pin motherboard connector for power. The colors of the connectors should match up (as the layout should be the same, assuming they comply with the ATX standard), however some manufactures have different color schemes. Do note that some PC's use PSU's with custom layouts, there have been some cases of this happening with certain models of Dell desktops, however this is quite rare.

So overall assuming the PC isn't very old you should have no problem using a new power supply, as they both should comply with the ATX standard (24pin connector, standard layout). If you are not 100% sure, you can post the model name of your power supply and motherboard, or the model number of your PC and we can help you out.

Hope this helps!

 

[jclark43]

Thanks again for the info. The pc is about 4 rs old. It is a HP model p6228p. The new supply is a Hercules 500 watt which appears to be real cheaply made. The wires are smaller gauge than my 300 watt psu. So I may send it back.

 

[fil1p]

Your PC has a regular 24pin motherboard connector, so and new PSU will do. If possible I would send back the Hercules PSU, as it is a very low quality PSU. Get a quality unit, a low quality PSU can damage your components, and will not provide safe and stable power. It lacks safety features, and I would not use it at all.
The internals are very poor:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=324

I would recommend you take a look at this ranked list of power supplies:
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx


Hope this helps!

 

[jclark43]

Thanks for the advice; I think I will send the PSU back and get a better quality. The reason to upgrade was to add a new Radeon HD 6770 card that my brother-n-law gave me, which requires a PCI Express 2.1 bus. Do you see any problems with my pc running this board?

 

[smeezekitty]

No problem. PCI-E is both forward and backwards compatible with the exception of some very old PCI-E 1.0 boards.