You know that feeling you get when you see something that’s so simple and it surprises you that it took someone so long to make it happen? This is it.
I’ve been bending/scrunching the stock SATA power cables for years wishing that someone would create a set of cables with headers that were spaced just far enough apart to connect up a cage full of drives without the dreaded cable bulge between them. Trying to flatten them out so the case side panels could go on was a pet hate. It shouldn’t have been so hard to have neat cables. Was that much to ask? Really? Well, apparently so.
Anyway, in our last build for the R3 home server, I had a feeling that with 8 drives to be connected it would be worth having another look through what was available and I found these little beauties. At $19 a set, I splashed out and bought 2 of them to connect up my 8 drives and just hoped the spacing would work out. I figured that it was worth the gamble for potential “Power Cabling Utopia.”
The alternative was aftermarket SATA cables like the Bitfenix Alchemy or NZXT sleeved cables in the hope that the slack could be more neatly concealed – better but still a compromise. Although we were itching to use some Alchemy cable goodness, that itch will need to be scratched on another project so watch this space.
Back on topic, this is a simple product that does exactly what it says, it takes a SATA power connector and allows you to plug up to 4 devices into it at appropriately spaced intervals for most standard cases with drive cages. The measurements for the power headers are 60mm, 43mm, 43mm, 43mm.
There is a capacitor as an added bonus but the cable itself truly was the answer I’d been looking for over the past 4 years or so. SilverStone state that the cable/adapter “Includes two 2200μF capacitors for stabilizing +12V and +5V voltages”. We can’t prove or measure this but it does give us a warm and fuzzy feeling now that we’ve used it.
This is one bit of kit that we will use again on builds where we use the drive cages to their full extent. Thumbs up to the guys at SilverStone for this one and we’ll be sure to keep a few on hand in the future.
Cost – $19