ATX Power Connectors on older motherboard

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I have a computer that I build in Dec, 2010 which runs email software very nicely for me, so I am trying to keep it alive.  ASUS M4a89 Series motherboard, AMD X2 processor, 16 Gb  memory, Kingston SA400 480 GB SSD  hard drive.

I have experienced the machine dropping dead in the middle of activity several times in the past 6 weeks or so.  Suddenly black screen, case lights go out, fans stop.  If I turn off the electricity on the back of the power supply, turn it back on, let it rest for a while, then it will restart, maybe.  Sometimes it just about boots up, and then I open Outlook, and it dies again.  One evening it took 45 minutes of this before it would stay up and let me see email again.

My diagnosis:  After 12 years of service the power supply is near death.  Power supply is Antec Earthwatts 500D.  I have ordered a new one, via NewEgg.

QUESTION:  The new version of Antec ‘Green’ 500D has two 4-pin 12v connectors, which seem to be intended for the motherboard’s ATX 8 pin connector, labeled 8-pin EATX12V in the motherboard manual.  IS THIS GOING TO WORK?  Will this all plug together and work properly?

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I believe this is a similar situation on this website. Link.

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1207278-eatx12-help/

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I concur on the diagnosis. Was thinking the same thing as I read it!

I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. What did the old PSU have that leads you to doubt the new one? The two four pins typically will slide together a bit and form a single plug. It is broken into two pieces to work for older motherboards that have only a four pin connector there.

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Wallace Mcmullen

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Acaris, I hope you are right.  I’ll find out when the new power supply unit is delivered.  What you say seems very reasonable, & gives me optimism.

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There’s a review of that specific PSU at Antec Earthwatts EA-500D Green test with an image of all the cables that clearly shows those two 4-pin 12V plugs are in fact ATX/EPS 4+4 plugs (i.e. they get plugged into the 8 pin connector on your motherboard “side-by-side“.)

It’s similar to how the plugs on the end of most PCI-e cables are normally 6+2 where the extra 2-pin plug goes “side-by-side” with the 6-pin one if your PCI-e device uses an 8-pin connector (like the Nvidia RTX GeForce 3060 Ti GPU I use.)

BTW, my desktop uses a Cooler Master V750 PSU and one of my 12V cables has the same 4+4 12V plugs and they work just fine plugged into the 8 pin EATX12V_2 connector on my motherboard “side-by-side” while the primary 8-pin 12V cable is plugged into the EATX12V_1 connector.

Note: my Asus Maximus XI Gene motherboard has two EATX12V connectors because the Gen 8 & 9 CPU’s it supports require more power to remain stable, especially when overclocked – which mine is.

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Consider this…

“…if you’re encountering system instability issues like abrupt shut downs, blue screen crashes, and freezes—especially while doing something demanding like playing PC games or encoding video—your computer may be…

…overheating.”

Quote from https://www.howtogeek.com/174288/how-to-tell-if-your-computer-is-overheating-and-what-to-do-about-it/

How often do you open up your PC and vacuum all the dust bunnies out? Are your fans spinning? It might even be the 12-year old thermal paste between your CPU and its cooler. Of course it could very well be the PSU, but it might be less expensive to check inside the case first.

Just a different perspective.

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Ascaris

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It could be heat, and you are right, it would be good to check it before spending money… but  Wallace had already ordered the new PSU before he posted. It would be a good idea to check for overheating before installing the thing and making it nonreturnable (if it is returnable at all).

An overheating CPU on a newer CPU would thermal throttle almost to a stop to keep from overheating. If that was not enough to cool it, it would then turn itself off.

A CPU as old as the OP’s, though, may not throttle, or it may be controlled by the BIOS. I don’t remember seeing throttling on those older units, but it’s been a while.

Regardless of that, though, once the power is off, it just takes a few seconds for a really hot CPU to passively cool enough to restart. It may not run for long, but at least it would start normally. But Wallace had written this…

If I turn off the electricity on the back of the power supply, turn it back on, let it rest for a while, then it will restart, maybe.

Turning off the power switch on the PSU would not have any effect on an overheated CPU, but a PSU that was malfunctioning would quite possibly require power to be cut for a brief time before it would boot again. If the PSU does not send a power_good signal to the motherboard after being powered on, it won’t begin POST or try to boot even if it is receiving power.

I had a PSU a few years ago behave very similarly. Simply pressing the ON button on the case did nothing. I had to turn off the switch on the PSU, let it rest a bit, then try turning it back on. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes I would have to try again, letting it wait a little bit longer.

That PSU turned out to have a bunch of bulging electrolytic capacitors in it, and when I replaced it, everything worked fine.

After a reread, I realize I misread the original post. I was thinking Wallace said that the PC would sometimes refuse to start in that way for 45 minutes after having one of the failures. But that isn’t what he wrote. The repeated start-shut off-start cycle could be it overheating, but at some point it begins working again. It could be a fan finally getting started, but the quoted bit really seems like a PSU.

Still, it is good to check the cheap and easy stuff first.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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