w4vz

@w4vz: Thanks again for showing up with your method, I've received my cables today and everything works fine. So I got 2 x 6 pin PCIe splitter(1x6 pin to 2x6(+2) pin), one plugged into the DA-2, one end of it is cut of to use the cables for the barrel plug(3 cables each for 12v and GND) and the other end extends and splits again with the 2nd cable. Paperclip to activate the DA-2 remote works fine, too.

This is really easy, neat and nearly plug'n'play. The DA-2 plug needs a bit of force to fit into the 6 pin female part but it's really not much and there's no need for any modifications of the 6 pin female part.

Guess you spared myself some time, using a 24 ATX with cables to attach by yourself would have been more trouble.

Hey @Morv, you're welcome. Im glad i could help a bit

And need the solder capacitor? In the board?

You don't have to, not many of us has done it but if you have stability issue this is something you can try.

I have an akito + powered riser + Gtx970 miniITX + 600 silverstone. But is that another secure method I can use to replace the riser

Yes you need to make molex to barrel adaptor; that should do.

but neither is there a guide with alternatives, many post with many methods, but not a guide.

There are plenty of guides on the forum. One for everything as far as i know. They are a bit scattered on different posts and pages but they are there. What are you looking for ?

+1

The minute I saw a riser I freaked out and never thought about using one: a little capacitor glued to the side seems very dangerous and the riser leads to impractical builds with everything flat on a table top.

Molex to barrel is dead easy to do, no solder needed if using the screw one. Myself I soldered directly on the PCB.

Hello,

I would like to know, whether there is a significant decrease in Performance of the eGPU (Akitio) when daisy chaining with an external thunderbolt drive.

In my case I would like to add an external thunderbolt drive filled with games to the akitio egpu in daisychaining mode to just have 1 cable that connects to the mac.

I actually use thunderbolt 1.

Thank you

For what it's worth I have my ethernet adaptor plugged into the akitio and it is working fine at the moment. I did not notice any performance hit.

I also have tb1

They are two 6pin pcie splitters where one has been modified on one of the splits to have a 4pin molex instead to power the akitio.

Do not solder yellow with black. Always black with black and yellow with yellow or you will create a short circuit.

This is great. I cannot wait to get rid of my bulky 500W PSU! Appreciate you experts being so helpful to the newbies.

@w4vz I'll presume your browser crashes aren't related to power issues...more OSX being stubborn?

Thanks but Im no expert. I learnt by reading the forum posts a lot

This is my third try on EGPU try and the most stable so far.

Yes, I suspect OS X being glitchy (have a few little annoying bugs here and there so it is not perfect) Can't use silverlight stuff anymore right now for example; my screens go black and if I quit the browser they come back; never seen that before lol. Windows, from what I see in the forums seem more stable.

Have you made any modifications in Afterburner? I'm curious to know how this operates under heavy load. Power consumption can exceed 300 watts on the 970 as shown by anandtech. I assume the PA-2 will hinder overall performance? I've already bit the bullet and ordered my parts, but I'm a little concerned about a performance hit, especially for TB1 users, such as myself.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14922[/ATTACH]

Power, Temperature, & Noise - The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA

I am on OS X so afterburner is not working.

I play elite dangerous for hours on ultra settings with no problem so far.

The DA2 is warm but could not say if it is too much. I have a watt meter so I could try to check the draw at the DA2 in the next few days.

Ok, thanks!

By that statement, I would suggest that a 8-Pin PCIe plug should also work, right? With that 8-Pin you could more easily solder a switch into the wires between remote and ground.

But you solution still makes it the best way to connect the DA-2 with very little changes.

I have not tried but I reckon an 8 pin should fit just fine too.

I am still curious how the Dell DA-2 fits into the 6-Pin. Isn't there any problem with the square "pins" of the DA-2 going into the 6-Pin with a different layout of the plugs? Especially the ground pin on the right side of the DA-2 (opposite side as the remote pin) is square shaped and is going into the 6-edges 6-Pin of the y-cable.

I had no issue whatsoever to plug it. Just forced it a little bit.

So I tested with the 970 in gaming situation and it is all working ok as far as power is concerned. Still testing stability... No Gaming crash yet but two browser crashes..

I am about to do a similar thing but using a 24 pin ATX extender with pins to attach by yourself. I would have probably cut the parts of the 24 pin to the left and right I don't need.

Using the free pins I could decide on my own where to put which cable of another plug(pcie, barrel plug). An 8 pin pcie extender with free pins to attach is available too, though. Maybe I'll get both and see what fits

Your last picture shows that you're only using 6 pins and cut the other 2 which would block sense and remote? At least it looks like that. Why didn't you use a 6 pin pcie extender then?

Still, good job

What i used is two 6 pin pcie splits. One is modified with a 4pin molex. The sense and remote are still perfectly accessible and i did not cut anything. Not sure what you mean. You see the pin going into the da2 remote to the 6pin ground.

I think your idea with 8 pin is good too because making custom pins is actually really easy i found but my solution is even easier i think.

@w4vz: Nice! Did you had to drill into the 8-Pin to make it fit the DA-2?

No, it fits perfectly

Actually, I could not wait and plugged my akitio (no graphic card yet).

Seems fine but the DA2 is lighting up orange so it is not starting. I had to short the remote with the ground with a pin. Akitio up and running with green LED. I'll try the Graphic card this weekend I hope.

@w4vz: Nice! Did you had to drill into the 8-Pin to make it fit the DA-2?

No, it fits perfectly

INFO: w4vz' Dell DA-2 PCIe splitter mod

Moved this post to be the 2nd one in this thread at http://forum.techinferno.com/enclosures-adapters/9426-220w-dell-da-2-ac-adapter-discussion.html#post122731 for better visibility of this groundbreaking mod.

So here is my take on the DA-2. Still untested but I see no reason why it should not work. All parts from Ebay (

2x PCIe splitters). Only mod I did is the custom 4pin Molex to replace one of the 6pin end.

I put the 4 pin where it is to spread the current more over the cables. Comments welcome, please let me know what you think.

Actually, I could not wait and plugged my akitio (no graphic card yet).

Seems fine but the DA2 is lighting up orange so it is not starting. I had to short the remote with the ground with a pin. Akitio up and running with green LED. I'll try the Graphic card this weekend I hope.

@w4vz: Nice! Did you had to drill into the 8-Pin to make it fit the DA-2?

No, it fits perfectly

<A HREF=http://i.imgur.com/sDHXda9.jpg"><img width=400 src=http://i.imgur.com/sDHXda9.jpg></A>

Actually, I could not wait and plugged my akitio (no graphic card yet).

Seems fine but the DA2 is lighting up orange so it is not starting. I had to short the remote with the ground with a pin. Akitio up and running with green LED. I'll try the Graphic card this weekend I hope.

Hi! Short answer: No.

Longer answer:

It appears to be a regular 6pin PCIe splitter so it can't be used with DA-2 (which have reverse polarity to the PCIe interface).

You will either need to find a female DA-2 connection (I have not been able to) or change the DA-2 connector to a PCIe 6-pin. @Tech Inferno Fan has done some great work for a power breakout board for the DA-2 that you can check out here (hands down the cleanest solution so far):

http://forum.techinferno.com/enclosures-adapters/9426-220w-dell-da-2-ac-adapter-discussion.html#post127735

What about if I reverse the polarity on the adaptor instead? Seems more simple to do What do you think ?

Ok so my diagram is correct ? I could double the barrel one. Would that be sufficient ?

@jacobsson Just found this on eBay, would that work you think ? could be plugged directly on the DA2 and only need to modify it for the barrel ? what do you think ?

Well… you must take a look at the connectors on the DA-2. It can be connected on two positions to the 24-Pin ATX cable. If you cut the all the wires of the 24-Pin you can reconnect (soldering) them to the 8-Pins of the 24-Pin you chose. Maybe it is even easier to directly solder 6-Pin PCIe cables directly to that cut wires.

Please forgive my electrical ignorance. I read the guide here but still can't figure it out :/

The idea is to make 2 x 12v 6pin molex adaptors and one 12v molex to barrel from the 3 12v pairs pairs coming out of the DA2 ?

each 6pins molex takes 6 connectors (3+ and 3-) so I could in theory connect everything like my (bad) diagram below ?

Well... each part (barrel, 2x6-pin) has to deliver 75W. To spread the load even you can connect everything to all 3x12V and 3xground. 1x12V for the barrel might be insufficient.

@w4vz: As long as you keep matching 12V (yellow) and ground (black) between PCIe and DA-2 it should be fine. Just don't mix 12V from DA-2 with ground of the PCIe plug. Get the wiring diagram of the DA-2 and the 6-Pin PCIe plug.

you can also use an extension cable for 24-Pin ATX, cut the cables and rewire as you wish.

Hey Dschijn, Thanks for more infos on that. I am leaning toward using a Da2 myself and Im very interested to do the wiring with an extender because the soldering appears very tricky there. Could you elaborate on that by any chance ? I have no idea how to wire it really.

As I understand I need to plug 2x 6 pins PCIE connectors to power my 970 and my barrel to molex for the akitio from a 24 pin extender connected to the DA2 ?

Thanks junior. I think I'm going to solder the adaptor directly on the PCB.

If this is any help, I noticed today after updating to 10.10.3 that using the update function from the web driver preference panel I could update to the latest version in one click, no need to modify the installer. Still need to modify the kexts after but still a bit faster.

Hey,

So by putting my akitio back together after the mod in the hope of giving Egpu another try I noticed that my Molex to Barrell adaptor actually almost melted from my previous attempt (before the mod)

Funny enough only the "Domino joint" melted on the yellow side only.. Im really confused on why since nothing else did melt; cables and molex plug are fine. Some heavy current draw somehow ? bad idea to use this kind of jointer ?

I need to remake mine so any comments would be very much welcome.

Mine was detected in mac osx peripherals. Haven't plugged the GPU yet. I need to disassemble my pc first...

Here is the final mod done. Plugged the akitio PSU and it did not blow up.

Haven't tried to put the graphic card yet.

Here are some pictures, please comment because I had a really hard time removing solder for the 4pin connector. I hope it will be fine.

Did continuity test and looked fine. I have put a lot of glue gun over the scratched back after photos. Wish I had a spare graphic card to try first...