Terminal Strip instead of a harness?

[UncleJT]

I'm trying to minimize as much wiring as I can inside of my new build, a small little MicroFly chassis. So far I have one harness for my modular supply designed that will power all the peripherals but now I'm thinking about all the fans and cathodes which are located at the very front. My original plan was to just build a custom wiring harness for three fan-style connectors and sleeve it as neatly as I can. At the very front of the case we have one temp. LCD, one 80mm fan, and one dual cathode inverter that require power.

But I was thinking this morning, couldn't I just mount a terminal strip to the front of the case, behind the bezel, and run two wires from the power supply to it for feeding all these devices in the front of the case? Almost all wiring would then be hidden behind the bezel.

Am I off base on either of these ideas, can I go ahead and implement the terminal strip idea or is there an even better way?

Thanks

- JT

[jonnyGURU]

I've seen it done plenty of times before.

But to do it right, make sure you feed the terminal with heavier gage wire.

Pop open the PSU and crimp two or three of the 14g wires to a single 10 or 12g wire and run that to the terminal.

[UncleJT]

So running 16ga. from a 4-pin molex plugged into the Ultra XVS to the strip would be a bad idea, eh? Hmm, ok. Going to think about this some more as I wasn't planning on hacking the PSU, that is why I went modular. :) But, I do have a V-series sitting here that I wouldn't mind bastardizing.

- JT

[madmat]

You could put heavier gage wire on a Y coming from a couple of the molexes on the PSU. Run 14GA from the molexes, Y them into 10GA wire, run that to the barrier strip.

[jonnyGURU]

The lower gage the better JT. Think of it as running more drives on splitters on a single connector. The resistance will be huge and the voltage will drop.

[UncleJT]

Could the reasoning for such heavy gauge wire be explained to me so I can understand it better? I am going to be drawing less the 3 amps at the most from this strip. I only intend to use it for 1 fan, the little LCD on the MicroFly, and a cold cathode inverter. Combined specs on these put it under 3 amps.

What am I missing?

Thanks guys.

- JT

[madmat]

For one thing you could run the grounds, 5V and 12V to the barrier strip and from there run it to your drives, the other 12V accessories and really simplify your wiring. For just a 3A load though, 16GA wire will suffice. Just don't plan on future expandability.

[UncleJT]

Yeah, that's what I thought. The purpose of this is just to clean up the wiring at the very front of the case. I have a seperate harness coming off the PSU for the drives (2 HDD, 1 Optical). Jonny told me a few posts ago that a single harness would be fine for this application so I am going to assume it is still valid. :)

Expandability isn't a concern, c'mon.. it's a MicroFly and pretty maxed out to begin with. :D

Thanks guys.

- JT

[UncleJT]

This MicroFly is going to have to last me until Ultra releases the GURU-1000 case. Then, I will break out the spools of 10 gauge. :D

- JT