What is a modular power supply?

[RapidSnail]

Could someone please tell me what it is along with any pro's and con's?

 

[Aluvus]

Modular supplies have cables that are not hard-wired into the body of the supply; you only plug in the cables you actually use (mostly, at least).

People like them for the cleaner aesthetics and benefits to airflow. I am personally not really fond of adding another failure point and more resistance.

 

[krotchy]

http://www.xoxide.com/hiper-power-supply-blue.html

Theres the modular power supply I use. Basically instead of all the cables running into the power supply, the cables run into sockets on the power supply. This way you only need to use what you require in your case, and dont have to zip tie the rest somewhere to hide them.

Pro's: I built a workstation using a modular supply that runs around 5 wires total. 1 Optical, 2 HDD, 2 Motherboard. Thats it. No clutter at all.

Con's: Slight resistance at the joints due to metal contacts (no worse than plugging a 120V plug into a wall socket). Some modular supplies have poor retention to the power supply itself, causing cables to come loose (The hiper I linked uses XLR's with a screw retention to prevent this issue.


If you buy a cheap modular supply, odds are you are going to end up with something going wrong, and its gonna go wrong faster than with a cheap normal supply. However there are some good ones out there. The Hiper units are rated quite higher, and are considered to be an excellent 550W power supply (not 580W as advertised).

 

[Effect]

For info about PSUs, check jonnyGURU's post here, contains just about all the info you'll need.

 

[savvy]

Use the cables you need only.

 

[dBTelos]

To add to the above, a well made modular power supply has very little cons. A poorly made modular power supply has many, many cons.

 

[acegazda]

Originally posted by: dBTelos
To add to the above, a well made modular power supply has very little cons. A poorly made modular power supply has many, many cons.

well said. For example: the enermax liberty performs as well as any good psu in its price range. On the other hand the rosewill makes a modular psu that is reportedly worse than it's hardwired counterpart, which wasn't very good to begin with, but I digress.

EDIT: Some psu's are fully modular, every cable is modular, event the 24/20 pin power connector. A lot of them have a hardwired power connector b/c everyone uses them. Everything else is modular.

 

[Capitalist]

I have been running the Antec NeoPower 480w in my rig for over a year now, and I love it. When you look in through the side panel there are no wires restricting airflow, and it is very clean looking.