Optical Drive Audio Connector

[unholygregor]

Hi guys,
I got my new PC a few days ago and realised that it didn't come with a 4 pin optical drive audio connector. It wasnt included with the motherboard (asus p6t) or the optical drive. the optical drive has a 4 pin power connector and an ide connector (both of which I recieved). is this all i need to run the optical drive? i have read on a another forum that the optical drive connector is old technology and not needed anymore, the motherboard processes the sound through the ide, is this true? if so, why was it mentioned in the mobo's user guide? for compatibility with older systems? the gpu (gtx285) has a hd audio connector, dont know if this is relevant or not....

Also, the hard drive just has a sata connector and a power connector, is this sufficient to run it? there is another 8 pin connector, ive got no idea what this is for.... i dont have any cables for it. hopefully the sata and power all you need and its just there for compatibility with older systems...

Thanks for the help,
Greg.

 

[hunter315]

I havent used an audio connector from my optical drive ever as far as i know, there may be one in my old P2 but my p4 didnt even have one. Just the molex power connector, and the IDE cable are all it needs work.

For the hard drive just the sata cable and the power cable and it will work fine.

The 8 pin connector is coming from your power supply correct? It should plug into your motherboard near your CPU.

 

[unholygregor]

thanks for the reply, what a relief it is to hear that! but the 8 pin connector is on the hard drive for some reason..... i guess its for compatibility with older psu's (?)

 

[hunter315]

oh, that isnt a connector, it is a remnant of the old IDE hard drives where you had a master and a slave device, there isnt a jumper shipped on there any more because SATA cables only support one device but on an IDE hard drive it sets if it is the master, the slave, or if the cable selects which one is master or slave. It has no use on SATA drives AFAIK

 

[unholygregor]

thats great, thanks , but whats the difference between ide and sata? it just sounds wierd that my hdd is sata and my dvd rom is ide.....

 

[hunter315]

IDE is older and uses a ribbon cable and is powered off of a Molex connector, SATA drives are newer and use the narrow SATA cable and are powered off of a SATA connector from the PSU. IDE tops out at 133MB/s while SATA is available at 188MB/s or 375MB/s so it gives more head room for hard drive transfer rates, they cant saturate it yet but they are getting closer.

Part of the reason for the switch to sata from IDE is because motherboards support far more SATA devices and by having individual cabes SATA is alot easier to work with.

 

[unholygregor]

that makes sense, thanks hunter