Power Supply Pinouts- ATX, Dell, Power Mac

COMPUTER POWER SUPPLY CONNECTORS AND PINOUTS

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Different revisions of ATX specifications call for different power connectors. What's worse is some computer
brands use in their motherboards standard ATX headers with proprietary non-standard pin-outs. In some
cases, of course a wrong PSU will not fit mechanically. However, in many cases it will, and you can fry your
motherboard if you plug a generic ATX PSU into a branded board and vice versa. Here you will find
information on the main power connector P1 of both ATX and some branded PCs, which will help you
determine the right replacement power supply.

ATX and ATX12V CONNECTORS

When ATX form-factor was designed, it first employed a 20-pin dual-row P1 with
6A/pin rating. Relative to the old AT-style, it had three new buses: +3.3V, +5VSB
and PS_ON# line for remote ON/OFF. Intel later on introduced so-called
ATX12V that differed by an additional 2x2 +12V connector (you can find
information on the auxiliary cables here).

In the revision 2.0

of the ATX PSU
specification, P1
changed to a 24-pin
part for higher
power. The
designations of the
original 20 signals
left unchanged for
backwards
compatibility (see
the ATX power
connector pinout
diagram to the right
and also see our
guide on interchangeability between ATX versions). The rev.2.0 spec also
called for a separate current limit on 2x2 connector, which was referred to as
+12V2. In reality however, most manufacturers ignored this requirement and
wired both +12V1 and +12V2 to the same output with combined overcurrent
protection. In apparent acknowledgment of this fact, Intel's power supply design
guide rev.1.2 made this requirement recommended rather than mandatory. Note
that the revision numbers of the guides and the power supplies do not coincide. For example, the latest
combined PSU Guide rev.1.31 specifies ATX 2.4. Also note that here and everywhere on this page we

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Power Supply Pinouts- ATX, Dell, Power Mac

provide the front view, i.e. the view from the pin side rather than from the wire side. The colors are shown
just for reference. Some manufacturers divert from the recommended wires, so don't trust colors too much.
DELL

For years, Dell used

the same connectors
as in standard ATX,
but wired differently
(see the diagram to
the right for the
pinouts of their
Pentium II and III
PCs, Precision 410
and Dimension
8100). As far as I
know, except for
Dimension 8100,
beginning with
Pentium IV their systems use the standard pin designations.

POWER MAC

Apple's Power Mac G3

and some G4 (APG
and PCI) power
supplies likewise used
standard 20-pin socket
with custom pin
designations. Although
most G4 (such as
QuickSilver and
Gigabit) towers used
22 pins which are
mechanically
incompatible with any
ATX, Mirrored Drive
Doors had 24 pins. Note that TRKL refers to a so-called trickle output that is active whenever the computer
is plugged in. Basically, it is just a different name of a standby supply that feeds the power-on circuit. By the
way, recently Apple "conveniently" removed from their website pin assignments info on most older models.

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Power Supply Pinouts- ATX, Dell, Power Mac

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GES

Some older servers were based

on GES specification developed
by AMD for their processor. From
a technical standpoint, GES pinout makes more sense than any
other one because they grouped
together the signals of the same
name. They also moved
PWR_OK to 8-pin P2 that is used
for processor power.

This guide of course is not exhaustive and does not cover all custom
configurations. Particularly, Compaq and HP also used incompatible systems. As a rule of thumb, if you
have a branded PC, you should suspect it may be incompatible with the industry standard.

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2013 Lazar Rozenblat

http://www.smps.us/power-connectors.html[08/08/2016 7:25:31]