I'm trying to solder a molex connector to a 9400 gt to take some load of PCIe slot while benching a card (running on a crappy HP mobo that can't always deliver required power) I have successfully soldered 12v but GND is a pain considering pinouts of card. Can I instead solder ground to 12v fan header gnd on card? excuse electrical engineering n00bness. thanks for any help :)
are you sure it's the mobo that can't power the gpu?
using a molex connector won't help you if you don't have enough amps on the 12v rail. for a gt 9400 you need at-least 18amps. you should see a sticker on the psu somewhere that tells you the amps on each rail.
also yes the fan header would work but I doubt it would survive a benchmark. your better off wiring it back to the ground on the molex.
Theoretically any ground on the card would work BUT as @thorium233 said you must make sure there is enough amps on the 12volt rail and all your connections are solid. Benchmarking is no walk in the park
are thr pins that hold in DVI/VGA connectors also ground points? thanks for the help :)
yes both dvi and vga have ground pins but they won't handle heat that much better then the fan header. they were only made for 3.3 to 5 volts at best.