the ultimate "do i need a 24pin PSU ?" thread

[The Pentium Guy]

That's a good question - what's the point of the extra 4 pins on a 24-pin power connector? Those pins go to the graphics card anyways, and most of them have a power connector in them.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[cpush]

here's a question, what if the motherboard doesnt have a 24 pin connector? IE the Soltek SL-K890Pro-939. I am planning on ordering it, and have already ordered my x800xl (it has no molex connector). Will the 20 pin connector be enough for this card? I don't think any of via's new k890pro chipset boards have the 24 pin connector. whats up w that?

edit: also it was stated that the max watts a videocard can draw from the pci-ex slot is 72 watts, and this x800xl will surely draw more, will this be a problem?

 

[imported_brad]

Originally posted by: gobucksPersonally, I have a 24-pin PSU and i like it a lot (Vantec VAN-520A), and I'd highly recommend going ahead and buying one now so you don't have to replace it if you want to upgrade to a dual core CPU or new grapics card, or if you're building a high end system.

fwiw, im getting that PSU based on this thread and that recommendation

 

[GoodOmens]

Quick question:

I have a enermax eg465p-ve

Its rated at 35A on the 12v rail and is the 20 pin plug.

I have a pci-e video card with no connector on it ... its the 6600GT. Will I need the 20-24 pin adapter to run the card or will not having those 4 pins filled be fine??

 

[Cruise51]

I have a 24 pin power supply that I need to use with a 20 pin motherboard. Can I just chop away the 4 pins on the left (red, black, orange, and yellow), or is an adapter necessary?

 

[cptCuervo]

This question was asked before, but

The ATI X800XL vid cards do not have a separate power connector. So, is someone going to run into a problem with newer games and such drawing more power from the PCIe slots without a 24pin PSU?

 

[Algere]

Somehow I don't think 24P PSUs are necessary now. I believe motherboards have 24P connectors so that when time comes when 24P are necessary, 24P will have a strong enough presence in the desktop scene by then. IMO it's pretty much like the transitional period between SATA & PATA or AGP & PCIe.

 

[Arcanedeath]

the extra 4 pins on the 24P PSU's are exclusively for powering PCI-E cards.... With a PCI-E card that doesn't have a 4 pin molex or 6 pin PCI-E connector (like most 6600GTs or X800XLs) you need a 24P PSU, it's that simple or you will have an unstable system under load.

 

[Algere]

Not if your using a VIA K8T890 (PCIe) based motherboard since they're available in 20P form.

 

[cptCuervo]

Well after the build and testing under load for a few days, the system is stable.

MSI K8V Neo4 Platinum
AMD64 3200+ (Venice)
Corsair Value Select DDR400
ATI X800XL
Thermaletake Silent Purepower 480W (20 pin)
Output: +3.3V@30A;+5V@40A;-5V@0.3A;+12V@18A;-12V@0.8A;+5VSB@2A

Maybe with some new, high end game like BF2 it might be brought to its knees... we'll see.

 

[Octave]

Originally posted by: dev0lution

I think you're missing the point - your old 20 pin will work fine in the 24 pin boards. I have a TruePower 430 with the old 20 pin connector and it works fine in a 24 pin board. Why mod when you don't have to?

Also, it's always a good idea to check the specs of the PSU you're getting, since you can't always go by total wattage. An Antec Smartpower 450 actually has less Amps on the 12v rail than a TruePower 430.

I have the TruePower 430 watt too with my P5GD1 board that has a 24pin connector...it powers the board alright, yet my video card the x800xt requires a lot of juice, and without the adapter to the card it woundnt boot. I still dont have a 20-24 pin adapter, but i did find the 2x4pin to 6pin adapter for my pci express video card...and now everything is fine.

 

[KillerPotato]

Originally posted by: cptCuervo
Well after the build and testing under load for a few days, the system is stable.

MSI K8V Neo4 Platinum
AMD64 3200+ (Venice)
Corsair Value Select DDR400
ATI X800XL
Thermaletake Silent Purepower 480W (20 pin)
Output: +3.3V@30A;+5V@40A;-5V@0.3A;+12V@18A;-12V@0.8A;+5VSB@2A

Maybe with some new, high end game like BF2 it might be brought to its knees... we'll see.

Thats almost the exact system mine would be if i went through with my upgrade, except with a chaintech mobo. And its mainly for Battlefield 2 since i already have it preordered. However, after learning how it might be unstable with a card that draws all its power from the pci-e slot with only a 20 pin psu, I am undecided how I will go about this upgrade. Considering comparable 6800GT's are at least 50 dollars more for the pci-e variant, it looks as though my only other decent alternative for an externally powered card to try to maintain stability would be an X800pro, which while slightly cheaper that the XL, has 4 less pipelines.

Would the 4 fewer pipelines be noticably worse that I should take my chances with the PSU and go for the XL, or should I play it safe and go with the X800pro? Would the X800pro even be a much safer bet? Considering Ive been playing most of the latest games on an athlon 1600+ and ti4200, anything would be a huge upgrade, but I also want it to last me a while since I'm used to using my hardware until I can no longer play games on it at minimal settings with good frame rates.

I already have the Thermaltake 480w psu though because my no name one died several months ago, and am not too keen on adding another PSU to my upgrade price, especially if it has the chance of running the new hardware fine. Thanks for any suggestions

 

[TheSource]

I think everyone just needs to get one of these babies:

http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/viewproduct.php?show=T85SSI

 

[Budarow]

[/quote]I have the TruePower 430 watt too with my P5GD1 board that has a 24pin connector...it powers the board alright, yet my video card the x800xt requires a lot of juice, and without the adapter to the card it woundnt boot. I still dont have a 20-24 pin adapter, but i did find the 2x4pin to 6pin adapter for my pci express video card...and now everything is fine.[/quote]

I've read and read and read about the 20-pin ATX issue and still it seems there's much more debate yet to go before I feel ~99% sure I can pick an nForce4 Ultra board that will likely overclock (cpu) AND be able to handle a high power video card WITH my existing PS which uses a 20-pin ATX cable (it does have 34 amps on the +12DC rail).

Your explaination seems to make sense from my layman's point-of-view (i.e., with a 20-pin ATX PS, it makes sense a high power video card would need the extra power connector, 6-pin or whatever the high power video cards use these days, since the PS would seemingly not be sending enough juice to the PCI-E video card due to the "absent" 4 pins on a 20-pin PS.

Perhaps I should plan on purchasing a powerful PCI-E video card WITH the extra power connector to ensure I build a stable system.

Am I making any sense...didn't think so, I'm still debating and reading more and more posts:-(

Now I wish I would have waited to buy a PS with 24-pin ATX. I thought surely mobo makers would make their PCI-E boards backwards compatable since so many PC hobbyist have 20-pin PS'. Guess I may have been wrong.

I don't know...at least I've got some time to research the issue more. I'm not going to build my PC until I find a really good price on a 16-pipe/256MB RAM video card like a 6800 GT or x800 xl. For now I'll just lean towards a card with the extra power connector and play it by ear.

Regards,

Bud

 

[ubermann]

I just want a picture of where to put what volt in the extra 4 pin.
I thread with 13 pages and no answers and 95% nonsense.
If my PSU is good enought for NF3 and X800XT PE then its good enough for NF4 no matter what you say.
Or does the chipset take 200w ?
Im sure the X850 dont take 200w more then the X800XT PE.
I do understand the issue with PCI-E cards without the power connector.

One simple picture showing what volt the pins should have, anyone ?

 

[cptCuervo]

Originally posted by: KillerPotato

Originally posted by: cptCuervo
Well after the build and testing under load for a few days, the system is stable.

MSI K8V Neo4 Platinum
AMD64 3200+ (Venice)
Corsair Value Select DDR400
ATI X800XL
Thermaletake Silent Purepower 480W (20 pin)
Output: +3.3V@30A;+5V@40A;-5V@0.3A;+12V@18A;-12V@0.8A;+5VSB@2A

Maybe with some new, high end game like BF2 it might be brought to its knees... we'll see.

Thats almost the exact system mine would be if i went through with my upgrade, except with a chaintech mobo. And its mainly for Battlefield 2 since i already have it preordered. However, after learning how it might be unstable with a card that draws all its power from the pci-e slot with only a 20 pin psu, I am undecided how I will go about this upgrade. Considering comparable 6800GT's are at least 50 dollars more for the pci-e variant, it looks as though my only other decent alternative for an externally powered card to try to maintain stability would be an X800pro, which while slightly cheaper that the XL, has 4 less pipelines.

Would the 4 fewer pipelines be noticably worse that I should take my chances with the PSU and go for the XL, or should I play it safe and go with the X800pro? Would the X800pro even be a much safer bet? Considering Ive been playing most of the latest games on an athlon 1600+ and ti4200, anything would be a huge upgrade, but I also want it to last me a while since I'm used to using my hardware until I can no longer play games on it at minimal settings with good frame rates.

I already have the Thermaltake 480w psu though because my no name one died several months ago, and am not too keen on adding another PSU to my upgrade price, especially if it has the chance of running the new hardware fine. Thanks for any suggestions

I also built this w/ BF2 in mind I would go with the 800XL. I think it is the best X800 card for the money. I have been running HL2, WoW, Doom3, etc... with no issues. The 480W PSU is just fine. The longer I can put off a PSU upgrade the better. However, if you are planning on OC'ing, that is another story. I have no idea how the PSU would handle that... but I bet you would want the extra 4 pins.

If it ain't broke...

 

[miKeyy]

I just bought a
Epox EP-9NPA+ nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
and
ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express)

Will my current 550W ATX1.3 PSU work with this, the board has 24pin and my psu has 20.
The x850xt came with a 6pin connector.

any help appreciated
Mike

 

[monkeyboy311]

I just bought a Antec True Power 430watt psu about a year ago. I plan on upgrading my system soon. Will this psu be sufficient?

 

[maluckey]

The new 7800 GTX vid card REQUIRES a minimum of a 400 watt PSU, and 500 watt PSU for SLI with a +12v rating of at least 34 amps continuous for a 20 pin mobo. I see damned few of these on the market, outside of Zippy, FSP, PC Power and Cooling etc.

I say that if you want to use your PSU to power a word processing rig then just about any name brand PSU will do. Otherwise, the new standard is 24 pin and the low side for the next year is at LEAST 400 watts. Future proof and get a 500 watt, 24 pin when you upgrade. It should last a while longer than buying a 400 watt 20 pin.

 

[TheHappyPants]

Ok, I think this just solved my problem. I just built my new computer, heres the specs:

ABIT FATAL1TY AN8 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard
CASE ASPIRE| XNAVIGTOR SL/BK 500W
CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model TWINX1024-3200C2PT
Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64BIT Edition 1 package
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ ClawHammer/Hammer 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model
ATI X800 XL 258MB PCI-E

The problem is that when i go to start my computer it won't boot, all i get is a black screen. But when i boot from a pci card it boots up fine. I thought maybe the problem was that my pciex card was dead or my pciex slot on my mb wasn't working properly. My x800xl fan is spinning when i turn my computer on but for some reason my computer won't start up, it just shows some invalid POST number which means nothing. My PSU is a 20 pin but works with the 24 pin mb.

Do you think upgrading my PSU to a 24 pin would solve my problem? Would be much easier than the RMA process and then finding out it was the PSU.

 

[monkeyboy311]

Originally posted by: UsandThem
My Leadtek 6600GT card, does not have any additional power connections.

I have the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9. It uses the new 24 pin power connection (BATX), but can also use a 20 pin one as well.

The four additional pins are fore the PCI Express slot.

So my board has the 4 pin connection (for the CPU) and the regular power connection.

There are no other places to get power from. This is my Link

The AGP version has an additional power connection

Where is the extra power connector? The connector at the top of the card is for SLI, right?

 

[TheHappyPants]

I tried a 24 pin psu and that didn't work.

Well heres ther thing, i went to ho update the bios because a newer version was out and i insatalled the flash utility that is used to flash my bios. But when i go to open the utility it doesn't open? I get this weird msg that says "MSG To keep this box from popping up again login as administrator and open it again" This happens no matter what i do. The only utility that works doesn't even function properly. The first time i installed the utility you needed to reboot, and when i did my comp wouldn't boot up. I had to clear the cmos to get it to boot. So getting to update the bios is giving me trouble so i can't even do that. Does this maybe have to due with the fact that im using x64 edition of winxp? I think my problem might be with the corrupted bios, or back pciex slot on my mb.

When i change init display first in my bios settings, i get an error message where your cmos loads to defaults because of bad bios settings, but i can only get to that point if i boot with a pci card.

Im gonna send back the board tomorrow and see if the new one won't give me so many problems.

 

[indianduddawg47]

My computer keeps crashing while gaming. Do you think the ATX 2.1 PSU is the problem?

Here's the specs:
Athlon XP 3700+ with arctic cooling freezer 64 (90 nm san diego core... 67Watts max, not overclocked, idles @ 35C, full load @ 42C)
XFX GeForce 6600 GT with Zalman VF700AlCu (not overclocked, idles @ 42C, full load @ 52C)
MSI K8N Neo4-F (nForce 4 standard), stock hsf on northbridge, cool to the touch
2x512 mb OCZ gold edition RAM rated 2-2-2-5, set to 2.5-3-3-5
silenx 14 db 350watt ATX 2.10 powersupply.
western digital 10k sata raptor 74 gb, lukewarm to the touch.
antec slk3000b case (36C idle, 45C full load)

EDIT: I found out my motherboard recommends 18A on the 12V rail, and my PSU puts out 16A on the 12V rail.

 

[SirBrass]

Ok, I've searched and cannot find anyone with my mobo AND graphics card.

Thing is that my graphics card is still on backorder, but everything else is here. After hearing the x800xl does NOT have the seperate power supply pin, I'm worried. I JUST bought a new Antec TruePower 430 Watt PSU (NOTHING on Asus' website ever said anything about the mobo I got being a 24 pin and mwave never said anything about the psu being only 20 pin. so I just assumed they'd be perfect for each other. yeah, little do I know), and it's 20 pins, my mobo is 24 pins and now I'm reading about all these additional power requirements.

I have an ASUS A8V-E Delux board, a dvd rom, dvd burner, floppy drive, 2 maxtor 160 GB sata 150 HD's, audigy 2 zs platinum (front panel), AMD athalon64 3500+, ZALMAN Cu heatsink and fan, and 2x 512 MB DDR400 RAM, and I calculated everything and the 430 Watt PSU rated enough Amps to the 12v rail (26 A) for me to be satisfied with the power rating. Now I have the wrong PSU and in order to make it so that the graphics card will get enough juice, I'll have a HUGE power load on the thing.

Should I just go and try to get mwave to take the psu back and replace it (plus the extra cash necessary) for the TruePower 430 that IS 24 pins? This is a brand new system, btw, and I figure that mwave is taking its sweet time shipping my graphics card to me that I might as well go on and get the new psu while I'm waiting....IF necessary. I'd go with the work-around solution (molex) but the x800xl from what I read doesn't HAVE the 6 pins necessary for that.

How much strain would the 20->24 pin adapter put on my system power-wise? How much additional power should I calculate to be necessary?

After reading this thread, I've become very enlightened as to my particular predicament, and if I can do this while still providing enough power to all devices w/o getting a new psu, I'd like to. BUT if it's better to shell out the $$ for a new psu that IS 24 pins, then I will do so. I just need to know what you gurus and experienced persons think about the situation.

 

[indianduddawg47]

If you can switch to a 24 pin power supply with little to no cost, you might as well do it. It could potentionally save you problems, and it will futureproof your system.