positive wires in PC

xxdeebeexx

Hi,my son is building a computer and he is doing the system panel connectors.


The pins are labelled positive and negative.

The wires are not labelled positive or negative
They have a label such as 'reset sw' and an arrow pointing towards one of the wires


The 'RESET SW' consists of 2 wires red and black- the arrow is pointing towards the red wire. Is it safe to assume that the arrow means 'positive' ?


The hand book is very poor for this part of the build.


tia


dx

jaybeetoo

Have you searched on YouTube? There are lots of videos showing how to wire up a system panel.

Quiet_Spark

The polarity makes no odds where the reset and power switches are concerned, it only becomes an issue when connecting the HDD activity and power LED's.

Mankysteve

Quiet_Spark wrote: »

The polarity makes no odds where the reset and power switches are concerned, it only becomes an issue when connecting the HDD activity and power LED's.

I second that and while its not the best idea I've always used trial and error for the led.

xxdeebeexx

jaybeetoo wrote: »

Have you searched on YouTube? There are lots of videos showing how to wire up a system panel.

Thanks, I have tried everything !!
My son is pretty much - try it and see- type of boy.
I was trying to avoid any (more) disasters.


If the polarity was really, really important I am pretty sure that there would be much better info and diagrams in the manual.


thanks


dx

almillar

General rule that I've found here (and it's meant to matter for the LEDs) is that the COLOURED wire is the positive, and the uncoloured wire (or the colour that appears on each connector) is negative.

cookie365

Arrow usually means positive. Also, the labels usually face towards the nearest edge of the motherboard.

I've never heard of anything breaking because the front panel connectors are the wrong way round. The worst that would happen is that the LED doesn't work.

Nilrem

From memory the reason the motherboard manuals don't give you more information on the case wiring for the switches/lights is because there doesn't seem to be any standard for them (unlike say USB, firewire etc which are all standardised).
The case's instruction will often tell you what colour is what (if it's got an instruction leaflet, cheap cases don't always come with one).

What I have found is that normally the ground (negative) lines on all the cables for the switches and front panel indicators are the same colour - usually black or white from in my experience (whilst the positive lines will vary through the rainbow).

Having said that, as others have said for the lights/switches and speaker it doesn't hurt the machine which way they are connected, except the lights won't work if connected the wrong way round.

Depending on the motherboard there may be a little adaptor that lets you hook up the switches etc much more easily as it's a separate connector, then plug the lot into the motherboard in a single go (Asus seem to include it in most motherboards, and it's surprised me that others don't, as that job can be really fiddly in a lot of cases).


Note this advice only applies to lights/swtiches/speaker for the case - USB headers must be wired correctly or will damage the motherboard/connected device (but fortunately most cases come with a prewired, pretty much fool proof connector for the usb headers now).

forgotmyname

Reset switch and power will make no difference, Neither will the speaker.

Only LEDs are polarity sensitive, If they dont come on swap them around.
No damage will be done.

prowla

You may find that one of the wires traces back to an earth tack on the motherboard PCB.

xxdeebeexx

Thanks.... trial and error did the job.
Knowing that we couldn't cause any damage if we got it wrong really helped. Thanks.


The PC is now up and running (thank goodness)


I found the PC build very stressful, my son is far too impatient and wants everything done as quickly as possible.......


thanks again


dx