24 PSU to 16 pin motherboard socket? Safe to solder together?

[Pod123]

TLDR at the bottom. So I'm helping a friend upgrade his pc, but we ran into an issue with the psu to motherboard cable. The old PSU is only something like 230W so it's way too little to use for a 1050ti (runs off 75w through the pcie slot).

I've seen some videos of people splicing together the 16 pin cable with the new 24 pin cable to make it work. But will this be an issue with running the gpu through the graphics card?

There's also a load of adapters available, but this seems to be effectively the same thing.

 

The other option is to run pci cables to the mobo slot.

 

While we could go and buy a new motherboard, it's a 1150 socket so they're getting harder to find and it's very much a budget build if possible. Any thoughts?

 

 

TLDR: I need to connect a PSU with a 24 pin mobo cable, to a 16 pin mobo socket. Is it safe to splice the old and new cable? Will it supply the needed 75w for the 1050ti through pcie?

 

 

Example of adapter (instead of soldering):

[Bombastinator]

How old is this thing?

 

I had a 230w psu once.  It was on a coppermine cpu long long ago.  To give you an idea of how long ago, The PSU had a new fangled  feature: a variable speed fan.

 

depending on total draw a 230w PSU might possibly put up with a 1050ti because it draws so little power. You make a point about the power system though.  As to whether it could be a problem or not I don’t know.  There’s no specifics here so there’s little way to tell.  We need more information about the system.  I got a nasty suspicion this is some reaaaaly old equipment.  There were a bunch of prebuilts by different companies that used 16 pin motherboard connectors long after they had stopped seeing common use so we could be talking about one of those.  But a PSU that small with a 16 pin connector raises red flags.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Pod123]

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

How old is this thing?

 

I had a 230w psu once.  It was on a coppermine cpu long long ago.  To give you an idea of how long ago, The PSU had a new fangled  feature: a variable speed fan.

 

depending on total draw a 230w PSU might possibly put up with a 1050ti because it draws so little power. You make a point about the power system though.  As to whether it could be a problem or not I don’t know.  There’s no specifics here so there’s little way to tell.  We need more information about the system.  I got a nasty suspicion this is some reaaaaly old equipment.  There were a bunch of prebuilts by different companies that used 16 pin motherboard connectors long after they had stopped seeing common use so we could be talking about one of those.  But a PSU that small with a 16 pin connector raises red flags.

It’s a lenovo system with a i7 4700 or something along those lines, so my logic is it’s already drawing a lot. The pc was bought refurbished so I don’t really know it’s history. I’ll try to get the exact part names for you.

[Bombastinator]

43 minutes ago, Pod123 said:

It’s a lenovo system with a i7 4700 or something along those lines, so my logic is it’s already drawing a lot. The pc was bought refurbished so I don’t really know it’s history. I’ll try to get the exact part names for you.

So 2013-2016 or something. 4770 should be a 65 or 83 watt or something. Google will know.  They got hot though because it was one of the worst years for ihs TIM. That’s late enough it’s going to be a prebuilt from Dell or HP or something with a custom motherboard.  If this is the case the only one that might matter is the model of the machine.  The problem you’ve got with those is a lot of prebuilts were engineered as single systems and followed atx protocol only when convenient.  Those 16 pins won’t necessarily correspond to the same pins in a 24 pin atx pinout.  Atx was already on 20 pin by that time. The good news is there were generally a LOT of a given prebuilt made so Google if the model should produce all kinds of useful stuff.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Pod123]

4 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

So 2013-2016 or something. 4770 should be a 65 or 83 watt or something. Google will know.  They got hot though because it was one of the worst years for ihs TIM. That’s late enough it’s going to be a prebuilt from Dell or HP or something with a custom motherboard.  If this is the case the only one that might matter is the model of the machine.  The problem you’ve got with those is a lot of prebuilts were engineered as single systems and followed atx protocol only when convenient.  Those 16 pins won’t necessarily correspond to the same pins in a 24 pin atx pinout.  Atx was already on 20 pin by that time. The good news is there were generally a LOT of a given prebuilt made so Google if the model should produce all kinds of useful stuff.

Yeah we just double checked, it’s a 4790 (and built by lenovo I believe). I just personally don’t feel comfortable running a gpu with that little headroom for power. Especially when I have an extra 620w laying around and we just bought a case for it to fit. We’re tempted to buy a new mobo for it honestly, the current one is a very different layout to the standard motherboards you buy off the shelf and pretty confusing honestly. 
 

Or do you think it’s worth trying to make it work?

[Bombastinator]

Lenovo for that vintage is actually potentially good news.  At that time Lenovo was still or had only fairly recently stopped building stuff for ibm so their designs would have been still influenced by that.  A lot of them were made and you may be able to find data in retrofitting modern PSUs as someone will likely have tried it. 
 

Re: new MB

A 4790 is going to need a 87 or 97 series board.  They may be hard to find.  One might find something really cheap on China channel. Be cautious with these boards they can work but are known to brick easily and can be... odd.  These boards are often made of recycled parts which isn’t necessarily bad, but they tend to have extremely poor support. 

[Pod123]

29 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Lenovo for that vintage is actually potentially good news.  At that time Lenovo was still or had only fairly recently stopped building stuff for ibm so their designs would have been still influenced by that.  A lot of them were made and you may be able to find data in retrofitting modern PSUs as someone will likely have tried it. 
 

Re: new MB

A 4790 is going to need a 87 or 97 series board.  They may be hard to find.  One might find something really cheap on China channel. Be cautious with these boards they can work but are known to brick easily and can be... odd.  These boards are often made of recycled parts which isn’t necessarily bad, but they tend to have extremely poor support. 

Ok that’s brilliant, thanks for the help. I’ll have a look around for retrofitting the psu’s together. Would the 16 pin be ok for supplying the power to the gpu do you think? (Sorry if that’s a stupid q, I don’t know much about these psus).

 

We may also just get a cheap h81 board.

 

Edit: MB link
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YLH858G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_36K28256MGWTC3V3BQ4T

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Pod123 said:

Ok that’s brilliant, thanks for the help. I’ll have a look around for retrofitting the psu’s together. Would the 16 pin be ok for supplying the power to the gpu do you think? (Sorry if that’s a stupid q, I don’t know much about these psus).

 

We may also just get a cheap h81 board.

 

Edit: MB link
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YLH858G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_36K28256MGWTC3V3BQ4T

The 16 pin connector is an older but very functional design.  The main board power connector went from 16 to 20 to 24 pins.  I don’t remember exactly what changes were made when the pins were added.  Often adding cables just adds duplicates so more power of a given type can be provided.  I don’t actually know though.  the worry is that as a prebuilt the pins while likely are at the points they are/were in atx may not be in that case so that would need to be confirmed.  Prebuilts of that vintage are annoying that way. 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Pod123]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The 16 pin connector is an older but very functional design.  The main board power connector went from 16 to 20 to 24 pins.  I don’t remember exactly what changes were made when the pins were added.  Often adding cables just adds duplicates so more power of a given type can be provided.  I don’t actually know though.  the worry is that as a prebuilt the pins while likely are at the points they are/were in atx may not be in that case so that would need to be confirmed.  Prebuilts of that vintage are annoying that way. 

Ah ok I think I know what you mean. So I’ll probably have to get out a multimeter and test each pin

[whm1974]

Wait are sure it is a 16 pin connector going to the Board? My Haswell i5-4670 System I built uses a 24 pin connector to the Motherboard.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Pod123 said:

Ah ok I think I know what you mean. So I’ll probably have to get out a multimeter and test each pin

Hopefully someone else will have already done that for that model of machine.

[Pod123]

12 hours ago, whm1974 said:

Wait are sure it is a 16 pin connector going to the Board? My Haswell i5-4670 System I built uses a 24 pin connector to the Motherboard.

Yeah it's definitely not 24 pin. It's one of those prebuilt systems from lenovo, either 16 or 14 pin.

[Pod123]

12 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Hopefully someone else will have already done that for that model of machine.

Yeah I'll see what I can find.

Do you know if it's easy to connect the new wires from the front of the case to a board like this? Stuff like the power button, usb, aux, etc.? It seems very different - like one big wiring loom with the old case.

[Bombastinator]

15 minutes ago, Pod123 said:

Yeah I'll see what I can find.

Do you know if it's easy to connect the new wires from the front of the case to a board like this? Stuff like the power button, usb, aux, etc.? It seems very different - like one big wiring loom with the old case.

No idea.  I’ve  never been inside a Lenovo prebuilt desktop.  I suspect as long as you are using the board the machine is built for everything will be fine.  It’s wham you start using white box parts parts on a non whitebox machine (like that PSU) that stuff starts to go wonky.  Wires will be too short, connectors will be different, etc..

[whm1974]

20 minutes ago, Pod123 said:

Yeah I'll see what I can find.

Do you know if it's easy to connect the new wires from the front of the case to a board like this? Stuff like the power button, usb, aux, etc.? It seems very different - like one big wiring loom with the old case.

The full ATX Standard never Required that. But Intel did used a one piece block that meets it but they the only ones who had it.