I bought this PC 2 months ago. Yesterday, I had to transport it by car. Even though I packed it in the original box with foam, when I tried to set it up again, I noticed that this cable, which I had secured with electrical tape, was loose. I'm sure it wasn't loose before.
I know it's some kind of power cable, but I don't know where to plug it in (I'm not a hardware guy).
Note: The PC is turning on and functioning normally. I don't know if it's related or just a coincidence, but my headphones that I usually connect to the back stopped working.
Can someone shed some light on this?
It’s for a fan.
That fan can be powered either with the Molex connector (big chunky loose/floating bit) or a PWM fan connector (smaller one plugged in to the motherboard).
You wouldn’t plug in both of them at the same time.
Since there’s already a connection directly to the mainboard, the bigger connector was already disconnected and probably tucked under the IO shield.l that you taped it to.
If you want, you could also route the cable over to the back of the chassis and plug it in to the power supply’s Molex cable. Instead of having its speed regulated by the motherboard, it would just run at 100% all the time.
I was suspicious that this cable was disconnected and stuck somewhere before, but I wasn't sure. Thank you for the explanation.