Power Supply Required for P4 ??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Al Franz
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Al Franz

Have some old P2 computers was going to upgrade. Believe they have 250Watt
Power Supplies. Will that same case and power supply work with the newer
Pentium 4 Motherboards and CPU's or will it be insufficient?
 
as a general rule, P4 MB's require a power supply that has a 4-pin (not the
usual molex drive connector, this one is square) +12volt connector for the
motherboard in addition to the standard 20-pin MB PS connector.

If your 250watt supply has the extra 4-pin +12v connector it may work
although 250watts is the minimum I would use for a P4 system these days.
 
Al Franz said:
Have some old P2 computers was going to upgrade. Believe they
have 250 Watt Power Supplies. Will that same case and power
supply work with the newer Pentium 4 Motherboards and CPU's or
will it be insufficient?
Click to expand...

I was able to run a 1.7 GHz P4 Celeron with CD and HD drives and a
low-power video card from a cheapo 250W (so bad that PC Power &
Cooling used it as an example of what a bad PSU was like), but a 1.3
GHz Duron mobo with nothing but the same video card cause the PSU to
shut down in 30 seconds. But PSUs vary a lot in quality, so your
250Ws may have no trouble at all even with much higher power
consumption.

Most P4 mobos have a separate square 4-pin connector for the +12V
because they power the CPU from the +12V rail, and with these you need
a similarly equipped power supply or else the lone +12V wire on the
20-pin ATX connector could overheat. But some Asus mobos use a disk
drive power connector instead, and there are adapters to convert this
type of connector to the square 4-pin type.
But not all P4 mobos run the CPU from the +12V rail, and I run my 1.7
GHz P4 Celeron from an ECS P4S5A2 that has only the 20-pin ATX
connector.

There's a power needs estimator at http://takaman.jp/ that seems to
give accurate results, but for P4s it always assumes that the CPU runs
from the +12V instead of the +5V.
 
I was able to run a 1.7 GHz P4 Celeron with CD and HD drives and a
low-power video card from a cheapo 250W (so bad that PC Power &
Cooling used it as an example of what a bad PSU was like), but a 1.3
GHz Duron mobo with nothing but the same video card cause the PSU to
shut down in 30 seconds. But PSUs vary a lot in quality, so your
250Ws may have no trouble at all even with much higher power
consumption.

Most P4 mobos have a separate square 4-pin connector for the +12V
because they power the CPU from the +12V rail, and with these you need
a similarly equipped power supply or else the lone +12V wire on the
20-pin ATX connector could overheat. But some Asus mobos use a disk
drive power connector instead, and there are adapters to convert this
type of connector to the square 4-pin type.
Click to expand...

Using an adapter isn't a good idea.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/12v2x2.htm
 
Jim said:
Using an adapter isn't a good idea.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/12v2x2.htm
Click to expand...

While I agree that using an adapter isn't the greatest of ideas, I
disagree with Intel's contention that most standard ATX PSUs provide
only 5 amps on the +12v output. That's only 60w. That's bull. I think
10 amps on the +12v is closer to the truth except on extremely low
power (<150 watts) PSUs.

I am more troubled by attempting to shove too much current through one
wire, and an EXTRA male/female contact combination.
 
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