Building a computer for my first time. Confused about connections

Michael Zhang

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Jul 8, 2013
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So my motherboard has 2 ATX power connectors - a 24 pin and a 4 pin while my power supply has only a 24 pin connector. It doesn't have the 4 pin connector. Is this gonna work? Did I buy the wrong power supply?
 


The manual says it has a 4+4 pin ATX 12V I'm not sure what is looks like though.

Is it the 8 pins in a 4x2 arrangement? If so which 4 do I plug in?
 
This depends on your power supply. It should be a stand-alone cable coming out of the box with a 4 or 8 pin connector. Sometimes it'll have a nice label on it "CPU".

If you have a nice new 'fancy' power supply, you may find an 8-pin PCIe connector as well. Do not plug this one into the CPU power.

They are KEYED differently, you'll note that the connectors are made up of different patterns (squares/notches). There is only 1 that will match the CPU power socket. The board only needs 4 of the 8 and you'll find that half of the 8-pin will be keyed to match.