Cat 5e from computer to Stereo reciever

Hey

I was wondering if the power from a computer 3.5mm audio output would be to much for cat5e cable and burn my house down?

Here's the background,

I have wired a female cat5e wall plug in the computer room and in the entertainment room(for potential future use). Now I have taken a 3.5mm to stereo(red and white rca plugs) cable cut it in half and patched both halves to a male cat5e cable. I did it as follows.

Red wire from adapter -> Brown and Brown/White twisted pair on Cat5e
Bare copper from adapter -> Orange and Orange/White twisted pair on Cat5e

White wire from adapter -> Blue and Blue/White twisted pair
Bare Copper from Adapter -> Green and Green/White twisted pair

I did the exact same on the end of the adapter that has the 3.5mm plug on it. It works great.

But my only concern is will this cause the wires to become so hot that my house burns down? Or is the power output of the computer not that great. Will the twisting of the pairs cause it to heat up more? I called many computer places and they are half and half some say I will burn my house down and others say it is fine.

Thanks for your help.

 

As far as I know, the power output from a computer sound card is only a few milliwatts. That's why you need a powered speaker set to hear anything. The only problem you may have is a degradation of sound on a long cable run.

 

Hi Newbee,

Puppywunder is 100% correct. The output of the speaker jack is 600 Ohms Line out. That's only 2.2 Volts peak to peak. That's real puny. It will not run speakers but must be run to an amplifier input. Amp is included in typical computer speakers. Cat 5E is well able to handle the power.

Good Luck, Jim

 

Thanks for the reply,

I have posted this same question in another site and recieved yet mixed messages.

I figured that it wouldn't put out that much power since the adapter cable that I used was a #26 wire and I was using a pair of #24 wires twisted together. Also they make adapters for what I had plan to do and did, but I wanted to get some feed back from people that might know a bit more than I.

Thanks again for the reply's I am trying to get a hold of a clamp meter to test the amperage just to please my own curisoty.

 

After a nice science experiment I found out that the cat5e cable should be able to handle the amperage coming from the sound card. While listening to one song the max amperage I found was 20uA. That is 0.000020 A. At a max voltage of .9V for that song. (it fluctuated those were the peaks). So the power output was P=IV =(.00002)(.9) = .000018W or 18uW very tiny. According to this web site

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/9643/awg.htm

the 24 twisted pair in cat5e cable should be able to handle 2.38A.

thanks for all the replies

 

Hi Newbee,

Yep!

Jim