This is totally not related to 24-Pin power cable, but one thing I did was move to an M.2 SSD. Obviously, your MB will have to support M.2 and your storage needs may warrant a big HDD or SSD by as a primary drive it'll take away a power cable (depending on your PSU) and SATA cable.
Jup, very important. If you're going to buy just a single SSD, go for mSATA/M.2. Makes cabling a good bit easier.
We would ask them because both of them are active on this forum and actively soliciting opinions on how to make better, more appealing products which makes it more likely they would implement something vs a much larger, more experienced company like say, Corsair, which does have a presence on the board but where new products require much more internal momentum to reach production. I believe you personally have worked with HD-Plex engineers on issues, no? They are also experts in small run production of PSU related items, which this hypothetical PSU would most likely be.
That's a good point, actually. Especially HDPLEX themselves already sell (low-power) ACDC PSUs, so maybe might be a good company to do this sort of thing.
Actually I just asked them questions about their product, nothing more.
As you said though, it is modular in that you can remove the plug, but many wires are joined together so it is an all or nothing thing.
True.
I think most of the modular cabling prices (ala cable configurator and other sites) are done by hand to order, correct? That is why you see some of the crazy prices. I think that something produced in China where all you are changing is wire length could be feasible at reasonable prices. If you have already investigated this I will defer to you, however.
Yes, cable configurator cables are made by hand, but they're also always sleeved IIRC, so there's a lot more work to be done for their cables.
We're both just guessing in this area, but you are correct that manufacturing in Asia could very well drop the price to something managable. The problem I'm seeing is the low number of units that will be sold. Even if you sell 300 PSUs, the more cable lengths you offer, the fewer will be bought per length, and that always increases the price per unit.
So you either have to know which cable lengths will be bought in advance or buy more than needed and sit on a few spare ones.
I came across the adapters when I was originally posting my reply, so it looks like it would be easiest to go the adapter route. That said, if it saves vertical space and leads to a straighter run for a low cost, why not have the option? That is in the true spirit of a modular PSU to be sure. Working on a height restricted scratch build I know I would have apreciated it.
Do you have a link?
Does it really save vertical space, though? The ATX cable can always be bent so that it's not taller than the rear audio ports. I'm having a hard time finding a situation where this adapter would actually make cabling easier. I understand that you have to bend it less, but you'll have to bend the cable anyway and it's not going to change how thick it's going to be.
A cable comb is a good idea. If you've done the research on printed cables then again, I'll defer to you.
Again, I didn't, but I do know that the material price for cables is coming from the extreme amount of meters and kilometers that are being spit out by the factories.
I was speaking of replacing the 40mm front fan with an 80mm top fan at the mfg. As I am speaking of making a new PSU incorporating all of the ideas, the cost would be built into the product regardless. Do all of the various DC ATX PSUs sold on Ali have these expensive certifications and are they required if sold from the Chinese manufacturer straight to the consumer? 92mm fans do exist, as do semifanless modes - I'm looking for a product that would incorporate as many changes as possible to reduce cable clutter.
I see, so we're approaching this from somewhat different directions. Indeed an 80mm fan on a FlexATX PSU would be lovely (provided it works as intended) to reduce noise, but the space you're using for that can also be used for one or two 2.5" drives, so it's a double edged sword.
I like where you are going with the Pico to ATX 24 (PAX24?) adapter, I guess I'm just trying to spit ball different ways of reducing cable clutter without going that route. If you were going to introduce the perfect SFF SFX or FlexATX PSU, what would it do differently?
Which is good as the first idea isn't always the best one. I think moving part of the 3.3V and 5V generation to a Pico might be worth it, but turning this contraption on is quite a challange already. I did something like that with a thin mITX board, but you need a microcontroller for that.
Good question. I think the SSP-300SUG is quite close to being the perfect FlexATX PSU to me, but I would like it to be a little bit more powerful and have actual modular connectors. And be black, not silver.
The problem with modular connectors is that there's very little space to put them.
Another idea sprung to mind:
What if we used an ATX cable with thicker wires, but fewer that feather out on the connector? So just one thick wire for 12V, one for 5V and so on, and on each end of the cable, the pins that belong together would be interconnected with thinner wires. That way, we can allow for the same performance, less wires and 100% compatibility to all current boards and PSUs while reducing the number of cables to just 10 instead of 24.
