Powering 24 pin motherboard with 20 pin power supply

[Samshen]

Hi all,
I have a Foxconn 915 motherboard with 24 pin female power connector. I power it with a 20 pin power supply, living pins 21-24 unpowered and it works OK. I want to know if that could cause damage to the board in the future or any other problem. Does anyone has similar experience?

Thank you in advance

[Peter M]

As long as your processor and graphics card are low-spec, you should be OK. YMMV. There's a reason why the board has the 24-pin plug.

[Samshen]

Thank you for the reply. So you think that is not good anyway to use those power supplies if I add more devices?

Thank you

[Peter M]

Power draw of anything but CPU and graphics is fairly negligible; I wouldn't fear doing that.

Keep an eye on the voltages. This is never a bad idea!

[zepper]

The extra pins are to spread the load over more wires. If you check with a DMM, you'll find that all the same voltage pins (all the red pins, all the orange pins, etc.) in the ATX socket on the mobo are connected together within the mobo. You could treat the contacts within the connectors on the mobo and from the PSU with contact enhancer like Caig Labs ( http://www.caig.com ) Deoxit Gold (or Pro Gold as it was formerly named) to improve the current carrying capacity of the 20 wires. Caig products can be bought from McMaster-Carr (www.mcmaster.com) or perhaps you can find it locally. I occasionally find it on eBay too. Great stuff for all your electrical gear, e.g. makes flashlight batteries last longer and the bulb burn brighter if you treat all the contact surfaces in there, etc.

.bh.