Thin PSU wire replacement

[SQZY98]

 

Hey.

I'm currently trying to sleeve my (non-modular) PSU cables. Owning a bequiet! Straight Power 10 I have the problem that there are non-removeable thin wires (I'd say around 22-20AWG). The problem I have with them is that the ATX pins don't hold really well and sleeving looks flatened out.

Spoiler

 

Could I just cut it and solder 18AWG wire to it? The bottleneck here would be the thin wire and there is probably not much current going through anyway?

 

This is my first time doing this so I thought I better ask first.

Thanks!

[goodtofufriday]

Less effort to buy larger sleeving?

[W-L]

6 hours ago, SQZY98 said:

 

Hey.

I'm currently trying to sleeve my (non-modular) PSU cables. Owning a bequiet! Straight Power 10 I have the problem that there are non-removeable thin wires (I'd say around 22-20AWG). The problem I have with them is that the ATX pins don't hold really well and sleeving looks flatened out.

  Hide contents

 

Could I just cut it and solder 18AWG wire to it? The bottleneck here would be the thin wire and there is probably not much current going through anyway?

 

This is my first time doing this so I thought I better ask first.

Thanks!

Those look to be sense wires which are necessary for most PSU's to even function, you can do a double wire method and have the split moved back near the PSU end to allow it to be hidden behind the motherboard tray. 

 

 

[mariushm]

The sense wires simply measure the voltage at the connector, so that the power supply can be aware of the voltage drop on the wires between the power supply and connector.

For example, at 5v at 1A load, you may have something like 0.02v drop on the wires. The power supply may output 5v and at the connector you'll have 4.98v at connector. The power supply will sense the voltage at 4.98v and counteract that by pushing 5.05v or 5.1v so that by the time the electricity reaches the connector, you'll have 5v or slightly more there.

At 5-10A, you may have about 0.1v..0.2v drop on the wires, so without voltage sense your power supply would output 5v but at the connector you only have 4.8v.. 4.9v.

 

So in theory, you could open the power supply and connect the sense wires directly to the 3.3v , 5v or 12v outputs inside the power supply but this would basically kill the sense functionality and you won't have as steady voltages as original design.

 

Yes, you can also use thicker wires for the sense wires, but it won't make a difference as there's no current flowing through those wires. They're like a multimeter probe leads, only there to measure voltage at connector.

[SQZY98]

18 hours ago, mariushm said:

The sense wires simply measure the voltage at the connector, so that the power supply can be aware of the voltage drop on the wires between the power supply and connector.

For example, at 5v at 1A load, you may have something like 0.02v drop on the wires. The power supply may output 5v and at the connector you'll have 4.98v at connector. The power supply will sense the voltage at 4.98v and counteract that by pushing 5.05v or 5.1v so that by the time the electricity reaches the connector, you'll have 5v or slightly more there.

At 5-10A, you may have about 0.1v..0.2v drop on the wires, so without voltage sense your power supply would output 5v but at the connector you only have 4.8v.. 4.9v.

 

So in theory, you could open the power supply and connect the sense wires directly to the 3.3v , 5v or 12v outputs inside the power supply but this would basically kill the sense functionality and you won't have as steady voltages as original design.

 

Yes, you can also use thicker wires for the sense wires, but it won't make a difference as there's no current flowing through those wires. They're like a multimeter probe leads, only there to measure voltage at connector.

 

20 hours ago, W-L said:

Those look to be sense wires which are necessary for most PSU's to even function, you can do a double wire method and have the split moved back near the PSU end to allow it to be hidden behind the motherboard tray. 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for your input! I ended up leaving them as they were. It's not too bad now that I look at it. I had a different set of ATX pins which actually held on pretty well.