What amuses me about modular PSUs?

[Steve]

I LOVE my modular PSU, but it does have one feature which tickles me... a removeable ATX cable.

What use is the PSU without an ATX cable? Who in the world needs to detach their ATX cable? Hats off to Antec for grasping that one with their Neopower, but shame on some of the others for forgetting that key fact.

And I won't listen to the smart folk among you who suggest its use in a dual PSU setup - I used to have a dual PSU setup myself, and can't ever see a company having thought about that when they designed it.

[Rythmic]

Erm - if your power supply goes pop then you only need disconnect the psu cables...

Or if you need to take you motherboard out, and your motherboards atx socket is in a really nasty place?

OK - possibly grasping at straws here

It might me more useful if you could buy different lengths (and specify all the other leads as well )

[zaphod]

It is because it is

[iMc]

so you can buy btx ones in the future, or any other standard for that matter...

[BlackSheep]

... because they can.

[Ruggerbugger]

Or if you need to take you motherboard out, and your motherboards atx socket is in a really nasty place?

I'd second that. I had an ABIT KT7A-RAID that had the ATX power socket in an awful place. It was also very hard, physically, to get out. In fact, the only time I seriously attempted to get it out was when I was dismantling the computer to make way for its replacement.

I really can't understand why case and mobo manufacturers get things like this so wrong. Some collaboration would go a long way

[Steve]

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Take this picture of the traces near the socket on my A8N SLI:



The waviness of them is to ensure that the signals from the northbridge get to the CPU in the right order and aren't interfered with by anything else.

Of course, an ATX connector requires nothing of the sort, but with so many layers, components and requirements for PCBs, positioning things in the 'best' place for the user might not always be possible. Of course, a good designer who can make good use of the software at hand can get things pretty much spot on, but there'll always be issues here and there with board layout.

[Steve]

so you can buy btx ones in the future, or any other standard for that matter...

What's the point when the connector AT my PSU is 20pin ATX?

[BenW]

I would guess its so you can run multiple PSUs if you have a real power hungry pc.

If someone is using 2 PSUs then they only want 1 with ATX connector