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I just built my very first PC from scratch. Before that, I always bought pre-made PCs.

One thing I noticed while putting all the parts together, was that aside from the standard 24 pin connector, there is an 8 pin connector, labeled "4+4 CPU" on my motherboard next to where the CPU socket is.

Since my (modular) PSU had a few connectors labeled "PCIe & CPU", I decided to simply connect the dots using the appropriate cable (the one that was split in 4+4, not 6+2).

However, when I opened up my old PC and looked inside, I noticed that the 4+4 pin connector was only connected by a single 4 pin cable. In other words: my old PC ran just fine these past 3 years despite half of the connector being unpowered.

So I was wondering, what is the purpose of that connector? What does it do, and why do I need it?

EDIT:

My old CPU was an i7 3770K, and my new one is an i7 6700K.

EDIT 2:

There was actually a 4 pin cable connected to the 4+4 pin connector. Sorry about the confusion.

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Nolonar
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1 Answers1

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On most modern PCs, it supplies power to the VRM, which produces the voltages for the CPU.

I'm surprised that you got an i7 3700K to work without any connection to the CPU power connector. That CPU draws over 70W at full power. I suspect your machine would have become unstable if you had, for example, added a PCIe graphics card that draws the maximum allowed power through the slot connector.

David Schwartz
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