I'm having a strange issue with my PC setup. Every time I plug in SATA power to either of my drives, my GPU stops working as soon as I turn the PC on. I recently swapped the case and cooler, but other than that, everything should be the same. The drives aren't recognized at all with my usual SATA power cable, and when I try the one that I think is the right one, my GPU blinks twice before turning off completely. However, the PC runs fine when both drives are unplugged.
Also, when I use the original PSU cable with my drives, they seem to get no power or something similar, because they're not showing up in the BIOS. Just for reference, here's my system:
- CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X
- RAM: Corsair 32GB 3600MHz Vengeance RGB Pro
- GPU: Radeon RX 5700
- PSU: Seasonic Focus Gold 500W
- Motherboard: B550 AORUS Elite V1
1 Answer
Mixing SATA power cables from different PSUs can be extremely risky and might damage your hardware. The pinouts differ, and using the wrong cables can potentially harm everything from your BIOS chip to your GPU. Make sure to use only the original cables that came with your PSU. Try disconnecting everything and see if you can boot into the BIOS like that. If not, you might have caused damage.
Fortunately, my PC works fine otherwise, and I checked the pinouts— they match on the cables I'm using, but those drives just won't work with the original cable.