Low end power supply?

zinchmwah

Honorable
Oct 31, 2012
25
0
10,530
So not long ago I made an order (by suggestion from others on tomshardware) ASRock Extreme 4 mother board and I have built it for ready use along with all the chassis usb audio 3x fan controller i5-3570k, patriot viper 3 ram, cooler master 112 plus and some odl parts from my old desktop a hard drive and a dvd drive.

Last night I took the 250 watt power supply from it (no possible connection for graphics card of course) and hooked the 20 pin connected to the mother board right behind the ram sticks. I was able to turn it on from the chassis power button and reset same with the reset and power button on the mother board it self. The fans were all running and the hard drive and dvd drive were on opening and turning. The only problem is.. no video when I hooked it up to the monitor.. I have a good feeling that it is because there is either not enough power and that the mother board needs also an 8 pin power connector (just above the cpu left of the cpu fan header) and probably not jsut a 20 pin but a full 24 pin for the power connector next to the ram sticks. Am I right about this or is there a faulty somewhere or used to much thermal past and could have oozed out or something?? :S...

PS the power supply came from a 2007 Compaq Presario SR8507C I believe it is? Also does the XFX pro550W 80 pluss bronze have all the right connections for me with a GTX 670?
 
you plug the 20 pin into the motherboard as you did above and then plug the remaining 4 pin from the 20+4 (or 20+8) to your cpu power located on the top left
if the psu has 4 pins and your motherboard has 8 pins plug the 4 pin into the top half and see if you get a signal
 

zinchmwah

Honorable
Oct 31, 2012
25
0
10,530
@alvine So wait the sockets dont have to be completely full? Cuz the power supply does come with a 4 pin that connected to a 4 pin only right next to the amd socket on the old mother board.

and @ahnilated That makes sense not being able to use it on a gtx way out of it's league lol but I'm only doing this to make sure everything is right. It's my first time.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

HECK NO!

The +4 in the 20+4 power connector provides an extra +12, +5, +3.3 and GND pin while the ATX12V/EPS12V 4/8-pin connection is exclusively for 12V CPU VRM power. Those two 4-pin connectors ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. Plugging the wrong plug in the wrong connector will short some outputs to ground or different voltage rails which may either cause the PSU to shutdown due to overload or possibly damage/destroy components.

The 8-pin PCIE connector is also NOT INTERCHANGEABLE with 8-pin ATX12V/EPS12V since power and ground pins are on reversed sides and the PCIE power connector has an extra GND pin on the 12V. Mixing up those two connectors would short 12V to motherboard/GPU ground plane with the same consequences as above.
 
It should still work with just the 4pin to the cpu and just a 20pin to the mobo. There is no such thing as a 20+8. The + refers to additional pins of a single connection and the cpu connection is a different connection to a mobo connection. Separating the pins is for compatibility. If it doesn't work my guess is the psu just isn't enough power. 1) because it's a cheap oem and 2) because as psus get older, they can't supply their full capacity anymore. Knowing how much amps is on the 12v may help.
 
If you have a 4 pin cpu power connector, plug it into half of the 8 pin cpu power port.
Usually, the full 8 pins are only needed for overclocking. Check your motherboard manual.
It might get you far enough to post.

Regardless, you will need a better psu for the full rig.
The XFX550w psu has all the connectors you will need, and sufficient power.
 

zinchmwah

Honorable
Oct 31, 2012
25
0
10,530
@k111a ...14

@InvalidError I got my psu few hours ago and right now I have a cord that splits in two halvs of 4 pins ad only 1 of them is in right now and it is running stable. Should the otehr 4 be used for the OC'ing as geofelt mentioned?

@geofelt thanks for the tip. I've already read threw most of the english pages of the manual and I got the psu jsut a few hours ago and it's up and running using it right now.
 


Go ahead and plug in the other half of the aux 8 pin cpu connector. It can't hurt, and might help.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

If you have 8-pin ATX12V, use the whole 8-pin. Doesn't matter if you OC or not. The extra pins improve power delivery from the PSU to CPU's VRM which (slightly) improves stability and efficiency.
 


I know my name is hard to read for some, there are in fact three 1's. And no "a." You'd have no idea what people try to call me when I'm playing online. Thus why I don't use this username anymore.

Geofelt and invaliderror are correct, go ahead and plug in all 8 pins. Btw it is called a 4+4. I'm guessing my assumption that the old psu wasn't enough power is probably true.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

The 3570k draws less than 70W (my i5-3470 draws 40W under Prime95) while a 4-pin connector should be able to provide at least 100W so unless the PSU itself is flaky, 4-pin should be more than enough. Using 4+4 on a flaky PSU is not going to help much.
 
His old psu didn't work, his new one did. Was nothing about the 4 pin not working (which it obviously did), in fact I said it should work with just the 4 pin on his old psu. But it doesn't and "I'm guessing my assumption that the old psu wasn't enough power is probably true."
 

zinchmwah

Honorable
Oct 31, 2012
25
0
10,530
OK. I have the 8 pins in. Now for over clocking.. I'm not looking for a massive boost just something thatle keep my cpu under the same temp my laptop gets when maxing league of legends. Juste enough thatl make me realise the differense between 3570k running heavy apps and 2410m running 1 app. So what would be the best settings from top to bottum in the ueif oc tweaker settings for the cpu

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5793/ASRock%20Z77%20Extreme4%20BIOS%2004%20-%20OC%20Tweaker.png this is what some of it looks like. So any minimum and easy suggestion for dram and cpu voltage multiply ect ect would be good to know.
 

Select/enable overclocking support.
look for a place where the multiplier is 34, that is the default.
Then just raise it a few steps at a time and check for stability.
Leave everything else, particularly voltages and ram alone on auto.