I got my brand new computer today from ibuypower; its got an SSD hard drive that I've been super-excited about. When I first hooked it up and turned it on, I was disappointed to see that it wouldn't boot up and the hard drive wasn't recognized by the BIOS. I checked the connections and found that the SATA power connector (on the cable side, not on the drive) had the plastic broken off on one side so it wouldn't stay seated in the drive.
Since I already had the drive taken out of the case, I plugged it in to the other SATA power connector further up the cable, and it was able to boot up fine that way. I then tried putting the drive back into the case, this time oriented in reverse so that hopefully the 2nd SATA power connector would reach the drive. It barely did, but when I tried plugging it in, the plastic broke off in the same exact place on that connector. So everything in the computer is really nice except these little plastic things are complete pieces of ****.
Anyway, my question is how can I fix/replace these connectors? I really don't want to have to ship the whole computer back just for this. I don't mind spending a small amount just to get it over with so I can use my new comp. But I don't know how you can replace these as the cables come from inside the power supply itself. Any ideas? Anyone else had to deal with this before?
Hmm, I think one of these may work, as there is a molex connector farther up the cable. I'll see if I can find one somewhere local tomorrow, unless anyone has other ideas.
I'm guessing the connectors that broke were built into the power supply, and did not have the 4 pin molex connector that split it into 2 SATA connectors.
One of 2 things is going on here you are either putting far too much force/torque on these which could break/flex the PCB that it connect to on the drive or the power supply in that case is of extremely low quality. If you have a beefy system with a Video card that has a 6 pin power connector I would be concerned about the quality of the power supply and you might want to consider replacing it with a better one.
The link you provided is the part you need, if you can find something local look for long wires or buy a molex extender (just a regular M/F end so there is less strain on the cable when connected to the drive.
Picked up one of the adapters for $3 at a local place today, and now I'm up and running. I've got the drive oriented now so the connectors are towards the accessible side of the case instead of aimed at the back, so there's a little bit of slack in the cable and that should eliminate any further problems. And the plastic on the new cable is a lot more rigid, the ones that broke were just really flimsy. Good point about the quality of the power supply, that does make me a little concerned, but I think I'm just gonna stick with it for now since everything appears to be working well.
The SSD drive is ****ing awesome btw, if anyone has been considering getting one just do it, you won't regret it. Firefox and iTunes used to take a good 20 seconds minimum to start up on my old computer; they are literally instantaneous now. HEM used to take 30-40 seconds to startup, now it takes 2.
I've installed a few SSD RAID systems for SQL and Oracle servers. Operations that used to take up to 2 hours run in 1-2 minutes and a monthly report that often took over 30 hours to run is done in 15 minutes. You will love that thing more and more as you use HEM especialy if you have a 300K+ record database, difference is night and day.
Your power supply is pretty much the most important part of your PC and depending on your config you could be close to max rated output power and pretty much every PS manufacturer embellishes on what they can actually put out continuously system instability will be a sign and it can actually damage your system. You may be fine there, just so you know.
