Is the 12V PSU plug really necessary to boot?

[xizor]

I just bought a Shuttle AN35N-Ultra to replace my old Abit KG7-Raid. Reading through the manual it says the board will not boot unless the 12v (4pin) is plugged into the mobo. I have an older 300W Antec PSU that predated the 12V mobo plug, and I'm wondering if its really necessary. Am I going to have to buy a new PSU?

 

[jjmIII]

Isn't that a 12V connector, and it's only on P4 boards???

You mean the square power connector for the motherboard that has 4 pins???

They sell adapters to plug the CDrom/hdd plugs into those.

 

[xizor]

d'oh, yes 12v 4pin square plug. I thought it was only on P4 boards, but the manual says it wont boot.

Are there any retail stores that would sell the adapter, compusa, microcenter?

 

[TStep]

For what it's worth, I had for a while, a fortron 250watt PSU running a KN2GL socket A mobo without the 4 pin connector. A 2100+ TBred B was the processor, plus a CDRW, 30 gig 7200 HD, modem, etc. Used the onboard nforce2 video. It never skipped a beat and used it for about a month in this fashion. Didn't do anything too taxing (mostly spreadsheets, internet, etc), but did play a few games on it every now and again.

 

[Peter]

That depends on the mainboard. Some just use the extra 4-pin connector as a generic reinforcement of their common power, and some do what Intel originally meant and supply the CPU _exclusively_ from the 4-pin connector.

The latter breed will not boot without the extra plug connected, the others will - at the risk of toasting the 20-pin connector from overload whenever there is a demanding CPU or graphics card present.

 

[xizor]

installed it w/o the 12v plug and it worked fine, though I may look into that adaptor just to be safe

 

[bootoo]

Folks seem to have nasty issues once in a while o/clocking without it; but I run 2 8rda+'s that don't require it and they overclock just fine by me.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Peter
That depends on the mainboard. Some just use the extra 4-pin connector as a generic reinforcement of their common power, and some do what Intel originally meant and supply the CPU _exclusively_ from the 4-pin connector.

The latter breed will not boot without the extra plug connected, the others will - at the risk of toasting the 20-pin connector from overload whenever there is a demanding CPU or graphics card present.

Yup.

My KM4ML will not post unless that power connector is plugged in.