Power supply cables and their uses

Power supplies are shipped with a variety of cables with different connectors to power system components. Here below, you can find a short description of each of them. Please follow this link to find out more information about how to use your DC cables with your power supply.

Seasonic recommends using the original cables provided with each power supply.

Should you have any question regarding cables, please send an email to our technical team at support@seasonic.com.

ATX 24-pin Cable

The ATX 24-pin cable is used to power the motherboard along with all the peripherals (RAM, fans, USB, PCIe, etc.) plugged into it. Depending on the model of the power supply, the cable can be either round shaped and braided or flat. (see pictures below)

CPU Cable

The CPU cable is to power the processor. Depending on the motherboard, the cable can either have 4 pin, 8 pin, or sometimes a mix of 4- and 8 pin connectors. Please refer to your motherboard’s User Manual for more information.

PCIe Cable

PCIe cables are made to power graphics cards. Some cards require only the 6 pin or the 6+2 pin connection, while others need more than one PCIe connectors to be powered properly. Please refer to our website article Installation remark for high power consumption graphics cards to find out more.

SATA Cable

SATA cables mainly power hard drive disks (HDD), solid state drives (SSD), optical readers, as well as sometimes some fan hubs or cooling systems. Please note that this cable is not suitable to power risers.

Molex Cable

The Molex is one of the oldest cables still in use for older model hard disk drives (HDD), optical readers, fans, hubs, and devices that need power that a SATA cable cannot provide.

12VHPWR

The 12VHPWR is the latest cable that came on market with ATX 3.0 revision. It's for now only use to power new generation graphic card (starting with RTX 4000 from NVIDIA). Please refer to our website article, RTX 4000 and 12VHPWR cable Recommendations to know more about this cable and how to use it.