Does the amount of pins in the CPU power connector limit the CPU's i can use in the motherboard?

TumppuZi

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Apr 21, 2016
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As i have been looking through motherboards i noticed that in the B150 chipset there are some motherboards that have an 8-pin CPU power connector and some have 4-pin CPU power connector. Does the amount of pins in the CPU power connector limit the CPU's i can use in the motherboard? Im planning to buy an intel i5-6500 with MSI B150M Bazooka.
 
Solution
No. If the cpu you want is in the motherboards compatibility list it will work. The 8pin connector just supply's extra power to the cpu which can help if you are doing some heavy overclocking. All LGA 1151 CPUs can work with only a 4pin cpu power connector. The i5 6500 should be fine on that MSI B150 board.

Eximo

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You are limited to what the motherboard lists as supported, which is every Skylake processor.

Since it is a B class they don't expect you to be overclocking, so no real need for the extra power. Also a smaller board with less PCIe slots, so an additional reduction in 12V power needs.
 

Dunlop0078

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No. If the cpu you want is in the motherboards compatibility list it will work. The 8pin connector just supply's extra power to the cpu which can help if you are doing some heavy overclocking. All LGA 1151 CPUs can work with only a 4pin cpu power connector. The i5 6500 should be fine on that MSI B150 board.
 
Solution
That was an issue back in the 65nm and 45nm days, as the spec allows 10A per wire, so two 12v wires on a 4-pin CPU connector can safely deliver 20A which is 240w. As the highest wattage 14nm Skylake processor is rated only 91w you can see that even it will never approach this limit. The i5 6500 is only rated 65w.