Why does my Asus H670 Board Have a 8 pin + 4 pin?

[Relph84]

Hello

 

Simple question, why does my ASUS H670 board have a 8 pin + a 4 pin connector? Also the B660 has it.

As far as I know, it's needed when you want to overclock the cpu, but these boards I mentioned above can't overclock a cpu.

 

So why do these boards need a 4 pin as well if you can't use them for overclocking?

[8tg]

It’s to make it look like it’s more than it really is, it’s a 1 cent part with barely any board changes required and previously having extra eps power inputs was a feature only in high end systems.

Note that a single 4 pin can handle 140-150 watts on its own, more than enough for any stock processor except maybe the i9’s

 

Same reason the RX470 had an 8gb variant, as if anything the 470 was capable of would ever utilize 8gb of vram, especially at the time. Consumers look at it and go “wow this 200$ card has more video memory than the 980ti and fury X” and then they are sorely disappointed. It’s for looks, marketing appeal, a footnote on the box letting people know it’s for e x t r e m e g a m i n g p o w e r 

[RONOTHAN##]

For the most part it is completely unnecessary. The 8 pin header can handle 396w in its standard current variant, more than you can reasonably cool an Alder Lake chip with. That said, the 12900KS exists, a CPU that can draw 431w according to Techpowerup with just removing the power limits (a feature IIRC is available on the H- series boards). That's enough power draw that you'd want to have the extra 4 pin. Whether or not the VRM can handle that amount of current a 12900KS uses without water cooling the VRM is a different story though. 

 

Don't worry about plugging the 4 pin in. As far as I'm concerned any CPU you're going to install in that board doesn't need it. There is one CPU currently that can max that 8 pin out, and even then the VRM likely can't handle power draw without throttling. It's basically just there to make the spec sheet look nicer