I had read Joe L's post (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2920.0) about poor quality power splitters causing problems (hair loss in his case) and he posted a picture of a very nice looking splitter and a link to a vendor.  Unfortunately, they don't seem to sell those anymore.  I did some looking around and found these:

 

http://www.outletpc.com/hc7849.html

http://www.outletpc.com/rd6769.html

 

There are made by BitFenix and look very nice.  Does anyone have experience with them?  Have you found something better?

 

Thanks!

I bought two of them 2 weeks ago and so far they are working perfectly!

I would just make sure the wire gauge of your splitters/extensions are at least as thick as your original PSU wires you're connecting them to. Joe's splitters that he had problems with used thinner wires which likely explains why they weren't able to transfer enough current to his drives.

 

Sleeved cables definitely look nicer and I prefer them if the price is right. But the important thing to look out for is the actual wire gauge.

Personally I haven't run into problems with wire gauge (although thicker is better and the cheap splitters use wires that feel ridiculously thin).  My problems tend to be more because of poor contact between the plug/socket pins and/or poor attachment of pins to the plug wires.

 

On another note, I find it interesting that the manufacturer decided to sleeve EACH wire separately instead of all four wires in a single sleeve (what a pain in the butt that must be).

I'm using one of these to power 5 of the 6 backplanes in my Norco 4224 and they've been great. They were recommended by Johnm in the Atlas ESXi thread.

 

 

www.svc.com/fc454-34.html