Is it possible (and safe/reliable/non-damaging) to use a 20-pin ATX PSU with a 24-pin ATX motherboar

Posted by Legooolas on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Legooolas
Published on 2009-07-26T21:14:05Z Indexed on 2010/04/02 3:04 UTC
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power-supply

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motherboard

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adapter

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atx

I have a reasonably-decent old 20-pin PSU which I want to use on a newer 24-pin ATX motherboard.

I see that the ATX page on wikipedia mentions that 24-pin ATX is backward-compatible, and I can find 20-to-24 pin adapters to buy for a couple of dollars/pounds at lots of places, but I can't find any mention of restrictions on the use of these.

Will this work on any motherboard, or is it a per-motherboard compatibility question?

Are there any other restrictions like the level of power available (and hence the additional 4 pins with +12, +5 and +3.3V lines which are already on other pins)?

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