I recently purchased a 7960 workstation from Dell.  I believed the configuration included NVMe and SATA, but later discovered the workstation had 1 DVD (top) and 2 NVMe backplanes on the front... NO SATA.  Dell Support said my only option was to return and reconfigure, but there is no inventory of 7960s with the configuration I want, so I decided to keep it and add SATA. 

 

I bought a kit to add cages and SATA backplanes to the rear bays, but then I discovered that there was no SATA power connector on the Power Distribution Board  --- and this is where the wheels came off the cart! 

 

The reseller told me to use the 'Y' splitter they provided to connect to the NVMe backplanes and the SATA backplanes.  I did some research and found that the NVMe backplane power connector only has 12v power, but the SATA backplane requires both 12v plus 5v.

 

I chatted with Dell Parts Support, and their "required" parts list for this modification includes a Power Distribution Board, but part 95VHD is out of stock, with no date for when it will restock or whether it will restock.

 

Does anyone have a solution for this?   Is it safe to use the NVMe power source for the SATA backplanes?

 

Are there any good supply houses that are likely to have the parts and understand the issue?

 

I would really appreciate your ideas on this problem.