Difference between 4pin 8pin power connector for cpu

nickpra

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Feb 15, 2016
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Hi,

What is the difference between 4pin power connector vs 8pin power connector of cpu, like
Gigabyte h110m-s2 vs gigabyte b250m-ds3h
Will h110 bottleneck cpu for low power consumption. Please explain
And any doubt for question please ask.
 
Solution
Different connector standards. These connectors feed power for the CPU only.
The 8-pin was originally used for professional servers only, but is now common on regular consumer boards as well. It can deliver more power than the 4-pin.
Most motherboards with an 8-pin receptacle will function with only a 4-pin connected (filling half of the receptacle).
4-pin is sufficient for the vast majority of CPUs, and no CPU running on an H110 board will "bottleneck" from a 4-pin connector.
Only with overclocking will a Core i7-7700K require more power.

Olle P

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Apr 7, 2010
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Different connector standards. These connectors feed power for the CPU only.
The 8-pin was originally used for professional servers only, but is now common on regular consumer boards as well. It can deliver more power than the 4-pin.
Most motherboards with an 8-pin receptacle will function with only a 4-pin connected (filling half of the receptacle).
4-pin is sufficient for the vast majority of CPUs, and no CPU running on an H110 board will "bottleneck" from a 4-pin connector.
Only with overclocking will a Core i7-7700K require more power.
 
Solution

colelouiscloud

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Sep 25, 2017
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the 8 pin connector is what is called an EPS 12V connector. I was originally used in servers but once cpu's on the home desktop side started using the 12V rail on the psu just to function properly, that is when the 8 pin became a truly universal standard. For many cpu's the ATX 4 pin connector is still sufficient though, that is if you are not trying to overclock in any way. Learn from my mistake. I tried to overclock an FX 8350 on an old and cheap MSI mobo that had the 4 pin connector, and overclocking that thing on a 4 pin connector was pretty much impossible. The rails were not giving the cpu enough power to function at any clock speed above 4.2 GHZ, And that was exactly what the CPU's turbo speed was clocked at.
 

colelouiscloud

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That would not be possible. that motherboard will support that cpu but you would have to use a last gen core i3 and then update the bios, which I'm guessing you don't have.
so yes, get the B250, but if you want my input, Here is a motherboard that will support 7th gen intel processors right out of the box.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813130986

I personally have never had any issues with MSI, so yeah...
 
Theoretically, each yellow 12v/black gnd wire pair is good for 10A, so a 4-pin should be good to 240w and an 8-pin to 480w without melting or excessive voltage drop. In the real world though having some margin is good practice but I will leave it to you to decide how much overkill is enough for a 65w or 95w CPU.

There's another 120w worth of 12v on the 24-pin connector but that has to power 66w of the 75w PCIe slot (the rest is 3.3v) and everything else on the board that uses 12v.
 


Whose still making H110 boards? The ones listed now are almost all old stock sitting on shelves that have old BIOS files installed.
 

colelouiscloud

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The h110 will only have the proper bios to run the 6th gen intel core processors out of the box. Not the 7th gen, although they are compatable if you get a bios update, which that wont be possible if you don't have a cpu that will work with the mobo right out of the box.