5V Pads to solder on on PS3 Slim

[uBlock]

Hi guys, im trying to figure out where i could solder my 5 Volt LED Strips to, i only found tutorial where they cut the fan cable and solder it to that (but that one is 10 Volts), could i just use my multimeter to find and pick 2 points which have 5 Volts?

 

[sandungas]

There are several places, but i think the SATA connector is one of the easyest and safest

The factory HDDs are very low power, but the regulator that provides the HDD voltages should be overengineered, just incase someone connects a crappy hdd that requires lot of power

 

[uBlock]

There are several places, but i think the SATA connector is one of the easyest and safest

The factory HDDs are very low power, but the regulator that provides the HDD voltages should be overengineered, just incase someone connects a crappy hdd that requires lot of power

i opened my PS3 again, i marked the pins i thought that you meant, are these correct?

 

[Colek]

I'd just test these pins you've marked with multimeter to make sure - safest way.

 

[sandungas]

i opened my PS3 again, i marked the pins i thought that you meant, are these correct?

Yes, but check it by looking inside the connector and compare with this image
In the PS3 are soldered together in groups, in total there are 5 groups of 3 pins each

For curiosity sake... the pin 11 (optional) is used by most HDD's to control an activity led, and is active low (this means the led will be turned on when the pin 11 is grounded by the HDD)

In the PS3 piin 11 is soldered to ground because the activity led of the PS3 is not controlled that way... but you could control your leds with it
The electrical instalaltion is not so straightforward though because you would need to desolder it from the motherboard and connect it to a transistor (the transistor will be turned on when the pin is grounded by the HDD)

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Anyway... the other day i was re-thinking in your question and i have to clarify what i said here:

...i think the SATA connector is one of the easyest and safest

Is easy because the solder points are big, and are located in the border of the motherboard, this location is convenient because when you close the "sandwich" of motherboard + interference metal shields you are going to have your custom wires at one of the borders of the sandwich
Actually, if you are a handy man maybe you can imagine how to build some kind of connector at that border, this way you could "plug and play" your led stripe in the custom connector

And i said is safe because as explained before... i think the voltage regulator that feeds the HDD have a margin of power excess
And i think the voltage regulator that feeds the HDD in the PS3 fat models this margin is even bigger (because the old HDDs manufactured around 2006 was even more power demanding than modern ones used in slim, etc...)

So.. taking in consideration both things (easy and safe), yeah the SATA connector looks like a good place... but if you really really want to play safe.... the safest place is to take the 5v directly from the PSU

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The problem is the PSU doesnt have a 5v power rail (it have a 5v standby but this is not powerful enought to use it for other tasks)
So the elegant solution would be to add a voltage regulator (converting 12v to 5v) inside the PSU, connected to the big prong (the main 12v power rail, active only when the PS3 is turned ON, and inactive in standby)