Did I do long term damage???

[Feeterican]

I have a ASUS Z97 Formula MoBo and a 4790K. I bought this back in 14' and when I was building it I noticed that it had both a 4 pin and 8 pin CPU power. I didn't read the manual like a excited like kid and over looked the CPU power plug and thought the 4 pin was just for overclocking and should be fine with just the 8 pin connected. It did boot and I ran it like that up till about 3 weeks ago. I did finally plug in the 4 pin and the board is a hell of a lot more stable now (I was always wondering why it was randomly crashing on me (I'm a dumb ass)), I'm wondering if I did any long term damage to the VRMS that run off the 8 pin power.

 

What are your thoughts??? 

[Dissitesuxba11s]

Typically the 4-pin is for extreme overclocking. I think you should be fine.

[seon123]

They're probably in parallel, so it wouldn't make a difference. Extra CPU power connectors on mainstream platforms have always been and will (probably) always be a stupid gimmick. 

[Void Master]

No , I believe that it won't damage anything .

[NoxiousOdor]

Yeah you wouldn't have damaged anything. The 4 pin is just for extra power if it is needed. If you don't use it is won't hurt anything even if your cpu could have used the extra power.

 

So no worries!

[NoxiousOdor]

1 minute ago, seon123 said:

They're probably in parallel, so it wouldn't make a difference. Extra CPU power connectors on mainstream platforms have always been and will (probably) always be a stupid gimmick. 

I would generally agree but they can be nice for extreme overclocking

[Void Master]

Even using a 4 pin cpu power connector on an 8 pin mobo does not damage anything (unless you OC)

[rcmaehl]

Sounds like your CPU was trying to pull more power than the original connector could supply. It's unlikely you did damage as it'll just shut off instead of damaging itself.

[EsaT]

Properly attached 8 pin EPS connector provides more than enough power for heavy overclocking.

Needing anything more would be really extreme overclocking for that CPU.

Though who knows if Asus has screwed up something in motherboard design...

[seon123]

1 hour ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

I would generally agree but they can be nice for extreme overclocking

They would probably use the highest end, LN2 specific boards, I imagine. For Z97, Gigabyte has the Force LN2, and the other brands should have equivalents. And things like the UP7 deserves more than a puny 8 pin (just look at the VRM, 4x 8-phase with 60A MOSFETs).

So yeah, the highest end ones are free to do that. But anything lower doesn't really make sense. 

[Feeterican]

Thanks all for the input. 

 

Once I did plug it in, it's made a big difference over the last 3 weeks. By now it would have crashed or restarted about 10 times, now that it's plugged in it hasn't crashed once. It's been a frustrating Almost 4 years, wish I would have read the manual and plugged it in right when I built it lol. Sad thing is, I've built many systems before this one an really should have known better. But this is the first MoBo that had both 4 pin and 8 pin EATX connectors.

[NoxiousOdor]

1 hour ago, Feeterican said:

Thanks all for the input. 

 

Once I did plug it in, it's made a big difference over the last 3 weeks. By now it would have crashed or restarted about 10 times, now that it's plugged in it hasn't crashed once. It's been a frustrating Almost 4 years, wish I would have read the manual and plugged it in right when I built it lol. Sad thing is, I've built many systems before this one an really should have known better. But this is the first MoBo that had both 4 pin and 8 pin EATX connectors.

 

Don't feel too silly, there are lots of connectors on my board that I didn't know the purpose of for a long time. I've found that a lot of boards can be set up very simply or optionally very complexly. I am glad you found a solution to your problem and that it is a bit more stable now. It makes me wonder if I should bother plugging in the extra power for my cpus

[Feeterican]

On ‎9‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 4:25 PM, WhisperingKnickers said:

 

Don't feel too silly, there are lots of connectors on my board that I didn't know the purpose of for a long time. I've found that a lot of boards can be set up very simply or optionally very complexly. I am glad you found a solution to your problem and that it is a bit more stable now. It makes me wonder if I should bother plugging in the extra power for my cpus

You might as well, it wont hurt anything and you wont be staving you system from power it may need. Let me know if you do plug it in and if there is a difference.