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I know this might sound weird at first, but hear me out. I have an old 400W PSU, which I plan on using in my headless server. It won't be anything crazy. One problem: It comes with only two SATA power cables, meaning I can only power two drives (one SSD and one HDD at the moment).

I want to make something like this:

Since I need to power a total of 5 drives. Luckily I have a modular Cooler Master PSU, which comes with some extra cables I don't need. One of those is this:

It has one modular connector at the end and four SATA power plugs, which is exactly what I need. I know the modular connector isn't molex, because it has 5 pins instead of molex' 4 pins. The modular connector looks like this:

Does anyone know if I can wire this up to a molex plug, so I can use the four SATA power plugs? I have a spare female molex laying around I can chop up. I'm not sure how the modular plug is wired and if all 5 are needed (there could be 2 GND for example).

EDIT:

If we assume the upper ones are correct, would this technically be doable just doing this:

I don't need 3.3v as far as I've read.

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    \$\begingroup\$ What you want to make costs $0.91 from MONOPRICE. Why would you want to make one? \$\endgroup\$
    – Andy aka
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 15:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Andyaka 1) I don't live in the US. 2) I want it now. I need it now. \$\endgroup\$
    – MortenMoulder
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 15:43
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    \$\begingroup\$ Wanting it now won't attract answers so I guess your only option is to measure voltages and see if the pinout is correct. If not correct then you might have to add a molex to the end. \$\endgroup\$
    – Andy aka
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 15:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Andyaka See my edit and look if it sounds okay. I assume that's right. \$\endgroup\$
    – MortenMoulder
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 15:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ Assuming the adaptor at the top is correct then yes, your diagram looks right. But I'd still check with a meter as it would be an expensive mistake. By the way, Molex connectors come with lots of different numbers of pins. \$\endgroup\$
    – Finbarr
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 16:01

2 Answers 2

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IT WORKED! This is what I did:

For those trying to do the same: Observe that the sketch I made are female connectors. This means when you go to do your male molex connector, you should flip it around. Pay close attention to that, otherwise you'll be sending 12v into your 5v rail and probably fry your harddrive.

Applied some shrink tube (also on the leftover wire that is 3.3v). Turned on the system after testing with an old spare 2.5" 120GB HDD and voilá, they all showed up after that:

  *-disk
       description: ATA Disk
       product: KINGSTON SV300S3
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sda
       version: BBF0
       serial: 50026B725307A44E
       size: 55GiB (60GB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 signature=118c8db8
  *-disk
       description: ATA Disk
       product: WDC WD10EARS-00Y
       vendor: Western Digital
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sdb
       version: 0A80
       serial: WD-WCAV5P072200
       size: 931GiB (1TB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 signature=000eb003
  *-disk
       description: ATA Disk
       product: WDC WD15EARS-00Z
       vendor: Western Digital
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sdc
       version: 0A80
       serial: WD-WMAVU1508779
       size: 1397GiB (1500GB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 signature=cebcfd2a
  *-disk
       description: ATA Disk
       product: WDC WD10EARS-00Y
       vendor: Western Digital
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sdd
       version: 0A80
       serial: WD-WCAV5P241367
       size: 931GiB (1TB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 signature=00094ed0
  *-disk
       description: ATA Disk
       product: TOSHIBA MQ01ABF0
       vendor: Toshiba
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@4:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sde
       version: 3M
       serial: 84EFC3DXT
       size: 465GiB (500GB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 signature=77e39da9
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Yes you can chop up cables and solder them together. Just make sure you get the wiring right and insulate the joints well.

Yes the vast majority of SATA drives don't need 3.3V (the only exception i've come across were some 1.8 inch SSDs).

The awkward bit is getting the wiring right, cooler master have ignored the normal color codes and used all black wires and SATA connectors can't easilly be probed. You may be able to figure things out by measuring a Molex modular cable from the same PSU but the risk of a mistake seems too high for my liking.

Personally I would only do this if I had something handy that I could plug into the SATA connectors and put my multimeter on to check my work before I used it to hook up power to a drive but maybe i'm just risk-averse.

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