Athlon Motherboard with P4 12V connector?!

[vetteguy]

I recently bought an MSI K7T Turbo2 motherboard for my server. While hooking it up, I noticed it has one of those 4 pin 12V connectors that P4 motherboards do. At first, I figured it must be a common base board that is shared with a P4 version, but I looked in the manual (which is very specific to Athlons) and it not only shows up on the diagram, but there is a page that says "Connect your 12V power supply to this connector". Is this normal? I didn't plug in the 12V lead and it works fine, but I was just wondering why this board has one. Should I be using it? Thanks.

 

[vetteguy]

Any ideas?

 

[ProviaFan]

No ideas, but this question has been bugging me as well. Consider this a "bump & subscribe-to-thread" post.

 

[coolroyboy2]

I have an Abit nforce and it has the 4 pin connector , I read in my manual that this connection supplies additional power for a heavily loaded system +12VDC ,300wt, 20A, +5vDC and 720mA +5VSB at least for supporting special features.

What I get from that is it seems give the board extra power if needed. Hope this helps.