# soldering a power supply to the motherboard



## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

has anyone atempted anything like this before ? the reason i ask is i have just bought a hp motherboard from ebay that uses a standard 24 pin atx plug but its about 10% smaller so no standard powersupplys will fit and i cant track down a hp psu to hack the connector off.

so what would be the best way to do this? i have a 20 pin to 24 adapter im going to solder to the motherboard so i can still disconnect the motherboard from the psu. 

is it possible to pull the plastic plug from the motherboard and leave the pins intact to solder to or do i have to take it all off? i really dont like the idea of trying to solder and desolder a 24 pin plug from a multi layered pcb

cheers


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## kenkickr (May 18, 2009)

Is it one of those slimline HP's?  Get a converter for a standard 20/24 pin to that small ass 20/24 pin like this, http://www.atxpowersupplies.com/20-pin-to-24-pin-hp-slimline-atx-converter.htm.  If you feel ballsy then go ahead and do it but I would say solder than converter to the PSU instead of the PSU to the motherboard..less likely to screw something up


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

yea i seen that site but shipping to the uk is ridiculous its 15$ for the adapter and 45$ for shipping and a bit of google magic later 60 U.S. dollars = 39.3752461 British pounds or more than i paid for the motherboard


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## kyle2020 (May 18, 2009)

Geofrancis said:


> has anyone atempted anything like this before ? the reason i ask is i have just bought a hp motherboard from ebay that uses a standard 24 pin atx plug but its about 10% smaller so no standard powersupplys will fit and i cant track down a hp psu to hack the connector off.
> 
> so what would be the best way to do this? i have a 20 pin to 24 adapter im going to solder to the motherboard so i can still disconnect the motherboard from the psu.
> 
> ...



I wouldnt bother, one wrong wire placement and itll take everything out thats connected to the board 

Id recommend a new motherboard.


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

i just paid £40 for the motherboard im not gonna just throw it out. my questions were:

can i remove the plastic plug around the pins without damaging them ?
can i desolder the pins and solder wires in there place?


this is the motherboard in question
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=110386670488

and im more than capable with a soldering iron see my eeepc mods in my sig.


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## kyle2020 (May 18, 2009)

Can I ask what the boards purpose will be?


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## kenkickr (May 18, 2009)

Yes you can remove them.  I use sewing needs to displace the wire tabs that hold the wires in there.  Just be gentle and don't rush yourself.  On soldering the wires to the board, you can solder anything as long as your careful and know exactly were the wires go.  Have you thought of just going to an electronics store like radioshack and getting smaller ends to put on the end of the psu wires?  That would save a screw up right there if you can.


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## Odin Eidolon (May 18, 2009)

ask MKMods, i think he's done something like that in the past. With his skills he could directly build a nuclear 2TW power supply and put it in a 2,5" drive


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## BulgarianBoy92 (May 18, 2009)

get a converter  its cheap and it doesnt give you headaches


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## KH0UJ (May 18, 2009)

I think you can do it bro, desolder off the motherboard connectors, then splice the PSU wires piece by piece, the same with my 8800 Ultra connectors have power losses,
 if you`re good at soldering then give it a go, one thing that`s good on connectors is the convenience, but if you want to have a minimal loss (voltage drops) then go ahead, i even put conducting compound on my 24 pin connector to minimize the V. drops, it save you money also.


My rig: http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/2014.html


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

i never even thought of that just removing the removing the wires from the power supply plug and pushing them individually into the motherboard that would save a hell of alot of time and slightly less chance of bricking the motherboard. i just hope they fit

ahh KH0UJ i see how you have done it you hav not even desoldered the original connectors you have just soldered it to the backside of it


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## qwerty_lesh (May 18, 2009)

You could just look around and probably find a shop with a smaller form factor power supply which would fit it.. surely


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

i can find power supplys that would fit but they cost far too much and im not buying a working power supply just to chop the connector off. i need to use the power supply thats in my morex 669 cube case because an hp one wont fit


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## Zehnsucht (May 18, 2009)

What you can do is to ask someone to buy that converter for you and ship it to you. Should get a lot cheaper shipping rate that way.


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## KH0UJ (May 18, 2009)

Geofrancis said:


> ahh KH0UJ i see how you have done it you hav not even desoldered the original connectors you have just soldered it to the backside of it



ya cause im after of the minimal voltage drop on my video card


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

i bought the motherboard because it has 2x pci-e slots a 16x and a 1x so i will be able to put a small graphics card in my server and use it as a spare gaming computer for when someone comes round and put a pci-e raid card in it. but its main purpose will be to draw minimal power when running rosetta@home with bionic. im looking at a e5200 and a 9400gt so i could also run a cuda client. it should be at least double the speed of my atom 330 dual core and its crap intel onboard graphics.


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## Beertintedgoggles (May 18, 2009)

The best way to solder directly to the motherboard (at least how I'd do it), remove the plastic housing then solder directly to the posts and cover up each solder joint with heat shrink.  This used to be more common than most of you might think when the CPU drew it's power from the 5V line rather than the 12V line, people would solder the wires directly to the motherboard to avoid any voltage drops across the connector.  My 5V line actually burnt itself (more like fused itself from the connector to the MB) when I overclocked my mobile 2600+ on my ASUS A7N8X (I think that was the model, can't recall exactly) to 2.75GHz on water.


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

Beertintedgoggles said:


> The best way to solder directly to the motherboard (at least how I'd do it), remove the plastic housing then solder directly to the posts and cover up each solder joint with heat shrink.  This used to be more common than most of you might think when the CPU drew it's power from the 5V line rather than the 12V line, people would solder the wires directly to the motherboard to avoid any voltage drops across the connector.  My 5V line actually burnt itself (more like fused itself from the connector to the MB) when I overclocked my mobile 2600+ on my ASUS A7N8X (I think that was the model, can't recall exactly) to 2.75GHz on water.



i remember reading about something like that back in the socket 7 days when people would wire the 3.3v line directly into the cpu back when they were running on 2.8v-3v.


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## Steevo (May 18, 2009)

Solder to the back of the board and hide your wires.


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## Geofrancis (May 18, 2009)

Steevo said:


> Solder to the back of the board and hide your wires.



well that looks like plan B, plan A will be removing the socket on the board.


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## Geofrancis (May 21, 2009)

well i managed to remove the power supply connector with a pair of pliers without damaging any of the pins and solder the wires to the motherboard. i cut 2 wires of the atx plug at a time then soldered them to the board so i got them all in the right order. i was having some trouble checking them with the multimeter becasue when i set it to measure resistance it was only showing 50ohms between the 5v wires and ground and i wasnt sure if this was a short or just the motherboard so i double checked all the wires and the electrical tape insulation to make sure nothing was touching and then put my Q8200 to see if there was any life in the board. it booted up saying "incompatible cpu" but thats ok because i knew my quad was incompatible but its booting up that was the main thing i was worried about and it didnt kill my quad lol



















not the tidiest soldering in the world but it works.


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## Steevo (May 21, 2009)

Unsolder the pins fromthe board, and go to the bacsideof the board with shorter leads to prevent shorts, slide heatshrink up the wires before you attach them, and then pull them back down and shrink them.


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## crtecha (May 21, 2009)

Yeah all those exposed wires and electrical tape is scaring me.


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## DaMulta (May 21, 2009)

Why did  you do it to the front and not the back?

Also Why did you not use heat shrink tubing?

Also that's a lot of soldering. Cut the cable about 1/8 and hold the gun on the wire, get the cable super hot, and then solder the wire. So when you go to add it to the board it will stick easier(Just use the wire and tap it on the board/less exposer/use heat shrink tubing.


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## coodiggy (May 21, 2009)

I think it's ok on the front; the posts will give better support for the wires. Shoulda used heatshrink tube though.. It doesn't look pretty, but as long as it works.. 

I'm thinking that once everything gets up to temp; the adhesive tape might let go.. You can take a pin out of the extension plug and slip over some heatshrink, slide it down over the pin/solder joint, replug the pin into the connector, repeat for each wire, then shrink em down. It might be easier to shrink them all at once, that way you don't accidently desolder a bare wire while heating up the shrink tube next to it.


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## Geofrancis (May 21, 2009)

heatshrink would have been better but i didnt have any around so electrical tape had to do. il probibly heatshrink it when i get some.


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## SpaceManSpiff (May 26, 2009)

If you don't have any shrink wrap around, you can always dope them up with hot glue.  It works pretty well as an after-the-fact insulator.


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## Geofrancis (May 26, 2009)

yea i was thinking about that but i think it should be ok for now aslong as i dont move it around too much. im going to start a project log for my server it started out as a little atom dual core server with some usb drives and now its hardly got a part thats not been modified.


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## Cuzza (May 27, 2009)

Hahaha awesome! Doing it that half-ass bum way, i like your style. I have a friend who's an electronics technician, it really winds him up when I do this sort of thing, I say heat shrink is for the fancy folk.

At least you soldered it. The other lazy option is to not strip the wires then jam the wires straight onto the pins so the pin goes right up under the insulation and hot glue it all together. It works nicely when you can't afford solder.


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## Geofrancis (May 27, 2009)

lol i wasnt that desparate to join them that i was gonna just twist n glue it all together lol but thats it all installed and working. when i upgraded from my intel atom 330 dual core motherboard i just unplugged the hard drive from it and plugged it into this one. i forgot to boot to the dvd drive to install windows and amazingly it started loading windows from the hard drive and installing all the motherboard parts apart from the sm-bus, the integraded graphics and the lan so i jsut got the nforce drivers from the nvidea site and it installed no problem it has to be one of the fastest upgraddes ive ever done.


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## _jM (Jun 2, 2009)

DaMulta said:


> Why did  you do it to the front and not the back?
> 
> Also Why did you not use heat shrink tubing?
> 
> Also that's a lot of soldering. Cut the cable about 1/8 and hold the gun on the wire, get the cable super hot, and then solder the wire. So when you go to add it to the board it will stick easier(Just use the wire and tap it on the board/less exposer/use heat shrink tubing.



My thoughts exactly! Your going to end up shorting out the system eventually with the method you chose to do it in. You really need to order some heat-shrink tubing and maybe some wire sleeving also. Thats a "big"connection to just use electrical tape/ That shit will never last and your just asking for a blow'n PSU and dead Mobo.

I understand that this is a temp solution. But you need to take our criticism very VERY seriously. If you care about this little project your doing, *your temp solution will end up being a perminate problem*---dead mobo/psu/cpu/and prolly everything attached to it also.... Just sit back and really "look" at what your getting in to first brfore you go any futher bro. Just tring to help


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## Geofrancis (Jun 2, 2009)

its been up and running bionc rosetta@home for over a week now. i know the electrical tape will lose stickyness as it heats up and over time but i hope that the tape will stay in place as a physical barrier between the wires .


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