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General discussion

Rewiring PSU

by tnmt_donkey Dec 3, 2015 6:19AM PST

Hi all,
I just had this weird idea: Turning my old desktop into an external hard drive and DVD/R rom storage.

Originally, PSU is connected to all hard drives, DVD roms and Motherboard. The front Power button is connected to mother board to switch the PSU on/off.

I believe there is a way that I can connect the Power button directly to PSU, skipping mother board and CPU. By doing this, the old computer will turn into a external enclosure tower for hard drives and Roms.

This is just a fun project to me, since I have lots of parts laying around. Thanks for your opinions, and happy holidays!!

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3 Posts
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Re: fun project
by Kees_B Forum moderator Dec 3, 2015 6:32AM PST

One of my PC's has a physical on/off-switch located in the PSU. So then I wouldn't even need the power button in the front of the case.

Just one question: how would you connect all those drives in that tower to another PC? You can't use any of the motherboard connections, because those have no power.

Kees

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Re
by tnmt_donkey Dec 3, 2015 7:40AM PST

I'm assuming all PSUs have a small on/off switch on it (Mine has one too). And it should be always on in most cases. But the hard drives are not always spinning when the system is off. If the PSU switch can directly control power output, the drives will be always spinning even the computer system is off.

So in theory, what I need is the electric diagram for the PSU control input and the front power switch. But I'm not electrical guy, I need more details on which wire is which.

And to answer your question:

I have some single external HDD enclosures. So I can make use of the circuit boards from those enclosure, and turn every drives into USB output connection. I don't really care about the transfer speed, USB 2.0 will work, those drives are old anyways.

My old computer case has 8 slots, which means I can put 2 DVD roms and 6 HDD in. I just want to enjoy the fun of doing it.

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Weird? not really,
by Oldartq Dec 3, 2015 10:31AM PST

even though you have lots of spare parts around but I don't think it's economically sound...and you said you are NOT an electrical guy. Just for your information, there is a way of turning on the PS without the whole system, I don't remember exactly jumper, Google that. You know they sell external case like that...right?

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