Abit AB9 QuadGT CPU power 4/8 pin

[Xiathorn]

OK, so I have a power supply. It's the Hiper 580W. It has a load of connections on the back of the PSU, which you plug cables into and connect them to your stuff.

Now, according to my motherboard, the Abit AB9 QuadGT Socket 775, I need to plug some power into the CPU power thing, to give the CPU power. All well and good. Except..

The power thingy is an 8pin. I don't have an 8 pin connector.

What do I do? There is a 4pin which I think is for the same thing, except Quad cores, which my Mobo can take, need 8 pins. The 4pin, however, doesn't plug into the conventional ports on the back of the PSU. It has 4 conventional ports, a PCI-E port, and something called the \"P4\" port.

So, I'm hypothisising that the p4 port is the one I want, as the 4pin is connected to something that will only connect to the p4 port. However, it's a 4pin and I need an 8pin.

I read on the net, just now, that the QuadGT is backwards compatible with a 4pin. So, do I just plug this cable into the PSU in the P4 port, plug the 4pin into whereever it will fit in the 8pin bit on the motherboard, and hope for the best?

Apologies if this lacks sense, as a few of you might know I had to fight a bit with Aria (Although HUGE HUGE HUGE thanks to ILoveLucy on here, s/he really really saved my *** and got stuff done for me) to get my PC, and now it's here I'm not even sure I can get the power to the CPU. AS a result, I've gone and got roaringly drunk with my corridormates (University life).

So, yes, I'm a bit drunk, and I'm tempted to just plug the 4pin in anyhow and see if it'll post. What's the worst that could happen, eh?

[Sean]

The majority of these boards normally come with a cover over the 4 pins that you don't need.
So, yes, plug it in on one side of the 8-pin - the worst that will happen is that there's not enough power for the board to boot up.

[Xiathorn]

Well, the system boots, and I've managed to get it to windows, but now it's being odd. My windows disk is likely to be a bit corrupted, so no real surprise there.

Basically, it didn't look like the 2nd core was doing a lot, according to the task manager. Also, when installing FEAR my mouse was moving at a very low framerate, as seemed to be the rest of the system. It was really weird. The CPU was locked at 50% - implying one core was basically overworking itself.

I've restarted the system and it won't boot back in, stating \"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\\system32\\ntoskrnl.exe

Obviously that's bad. However, this is the weird bit.

I put the boot order in so that it boots from CD, and put a different windows XP disk in. The system restarts as soon as the windows disk starts to 'check your system' or whatever. I've tried it with the other windows disk as well. Same result. It just reboots, a soft reboot rather than a all-power-cuts-out reboot.

Either that's the motherboard failsafes, or I don't know what. I've checked the CPU temp, it's 43 degrees when the cutoff is 85. Everything seems ok.

I'm not sure if the CPU is getting enough power. I'm using the Hiper 580W with a Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB DDR800 and an 8800GTS. Any ideas if this is bad?

[Xiathorn]

Having managed to get it to boot through pretty much pure luck (Restart frequently and hope) I'm in Windows now. It's pretty much fine. No issues going on here. Both cores are active and do appear to be working.

Basically, I have two issues, and only two. One :

Installing from the IDE-DVDR drive results in the first core running at 100%, and the second core not really taking over. Is this power-related?

Issue two :

When I boot I get that error (in the previous post). If I change the order of boot, when it starts to scan my system for hardware, the system restarts. Again, power related? Should I strip the system of everything that isn't needed?

The system spec is :

Abit AB9 QuadGT Socket 775
Core 2 Duo 6600 Retail
Gainward 8800GTS 640MB
2GB OCZ Gold 4-5-5-15 RAM DDR800
320GB Maxtor SATA2 DiamondMax +21
Toshiba Shitty IDE DVD-RW that's really awful.
Creative Soundblaster Live! 128bit (OLD :D)
Hiper 580W Blue Modular

I don't want the run the onboard sound, as I'm pretty sure that'll cripply my PC in terms of performance (it did for my friend, at least :P)


My biggest concern is why the system resets whenever the windows disk attempts to scan the hardware (You know, how it does that at the beginning of the 32bit WindowsXP install). It just reboots. No reasoning. Just does it.

Now, I've installed Windows already on this boxen, ALTHOUGH I have put in a soundcard since then. I'm thinking, do I remove the soundcard because the PC doesn't have enough power? After that, what? Get another PSU when I get around to it?

<edit>

Oh, by the way. When installing from stuff on the hard-disk, nomatter the size, it's really quick, even from an external hard disk. There is no slowdown, the CPU doesn't go insane.

Sounds like power issues people? In which case, should I run two PSUs for the same boxen? I can if I want to.

[Xiathorn]

Yet another post..


When I installed the system, there wasn't a soundcard plugged in. The soundcard came later. I have since installed a soundcard. Errors insue.

I have disabled the soundcard, and suddenly the DVD-RW works properly again. I don't know if it reboots properly; not going to turn it off yet. But it appears to be OK.

[Biodoid]

simple...go and buy an x-fi soundcard :)

a system like that doesn't deserve the humiliation of having such an old card :lol:

[Xiathorn]

Yeah, but will that solve all issues?

[Biodoid]

maybe the soundcard has an irq that clashes with some other hardware plus it's old even if you dont want to buy a x-fi card you could pick up an audigy2 zs card pretty cheap

but it does sound like an irq problem to me