Hello!

I have an issue with my computer. There are 4 sata hard drives installed + 1 M.2 NVMe. The whole set work nice without issues. Now, I added an USB PCIe card and it requires SATA power. I plugged the wires but USB devices plugged in the PCIe card do not work well.

I have an Asus motherboard with an Intel i5 12400F, but before this set, I had a Gigabyte motherboard with an AMD 6350 Six-core CPU. I tried to plug an expansion bay for sata hard drives and it also doesn’t work. If I unplug one hard drive, whatever it is, the drive bay will work and read the inserted hard drive.

Likewise, if I unplug one hard drive now and plug an USB device into the PCIe card, it will work.

Seems lack of power but my PSU is 850W.

Any explanation for this?

  • baadbee@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This sounds more like a motherboard issue than power supply. All of those drives together only pull 25 - 50 W. Removing one drive is a tiny change in power demand. If it were power the drives would work when the CPU is mostly idle and then failures would happen, mostly in the CPU, under load.

    • msdesignfoto@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      So, this happens with my current motherboard, but also with my previous one.

      I guess there is something I can install or update? Maybe firmware or any utility?

      Every physical connection was changed - from motherboard to power cables (new PSU) and the problem persists. Maybe both motherboards need the same adjustment?

      I’m using Windows 11, upgraded from 10 recently.

      • baadbee@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It sounds like a MB limitation. You could get a PCIe SATA extension card, $23 on Amazon. It will be slower than SATA of course.

        • msdesignfoto@alien.topOPBEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Thing is… My previous motherboard had 6 sata connectors so I assume it should have been able to connect 6 sata drives. But I never made them all work at once.

          • baadbee@alien.topBEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            It’s odd, but still not likely to be the power supply. Did you try different cords and sata connector arrangements so you know it is due to the count of drives and not just the last connector (you probably already said this above)?

            My MB has a bunch of conditionals in the manual where if slot X is in use slot Y won’t work. Maybe getting all 6 SATA connections working on yours requires that something else NOT be present (M2 SSD, etc).

            Good luck

            • msdesignfoto@alien.topOPBEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Yes, when I had the other mb I tried a bunch of several connectors, sata power, flipping cables through different drives, you name it. Now I am using an M.2 NVMe so its one less sata power needed. The previous arranjement was an SSD but sata-powered. Plus the 4 sata drives. All worked together. Whenever I wanted to plug a 6th drive or the Hard drive bay, didn’t work. I had to unplug one of the others.

              With the Asus mb, which has only 4 sata ports, I can’t connect a 5th sata device. So I also feel this is mb issue. This mb has less USB ports so I got a 7 port PCIe card, but it needs power from a sata cable. USB devices plugged there… They just don’t work. Unless I unplug one sata drive.

              Still searching…