Power Supply??

[Guden Oden]

Ahtlon XP was still fed from 5V I think.

No athlon has ever run at, or even close to +5V. Considering DC-to-DC voltage transformers run more efficiently the larger the voltage differential is between in and out it would make little sense to run a high-wattage CPU from anything other than the 12V rail, especially as that is designed to handle high loads. Feeding it from 5V rail would just mean more waste heat dissipated in the voltage regulator circuits and possibly sucking too much juice out of the 5V side of the powersupply.

Besides, I seriously doubt anyone could make a general statement such as 'processor X was fed off Y-volt rail' with any degree of accuracy; that really would be up to the motherboard designers to decide. They in turn would of course draw on common sense and design guidelines from AMD, Intel etc when layouting their board...

 

[Blazkowicz]

5V rail was the rail which handed the high loads, a friend had a hyper PSU (430W or so) with an o/c barton, strong on the 5V but a bit weak on the 12V, no problems to get it high (2.6ghz I think) (DFI nforce2 mobo)
He upgraded to a mobile A64 and 12V weakness was limiting badly his o/c this time, so got a newer PSU made for these 12V sucking processors.

you might well be right than 12V is more efficient, but I think AMD made the switch with K8 (at this time P4 were getting more and more hungry so globally 12V got stronger on PSUs.)
for a long time all logic ran directly at 5V (till DX/2 and pentium 60), then voltage dropped but still converted from 5V, stayed that way for long because of iinertia and not a big problem as CPU were not as hungry as a pentium 4 I think.

but let's not care too much, everyday all CPU are fed by the +12V. (as usual on such technical forum I can argue to death to show I'm right, damn )

 

[_xxx_]

Pentium systems dont require anything off the 12V rail to run (AMD does). A HDD and rom + card from 2004/05 is certainly possible. As long as it was quality and not generic.

GFX cards and all drives are on the 12V rail as well.

 

[SugarCoat]

GFX cards and all drives are on the 12V rail as well.

We were discussing motherboards/chipsets and what they depend on. I'm well aware just about everything else you put into a computer runs off the 12V.

 

[Bludd]

The manual for my 450W Enermax says the +12V rail is max 32A, which I guess is pretty good.

 

[_xxx_]

We were discussing motherboards/chipsets and what they depend on. I'm well aware just about everything else you put into a computer runs off the 12V.

Errm, he asked if his PSU is sufficiant for the machine, which includes like... everything?

 

[SugarCoat]

Errm, he asked if his PSU is sufficiant for the machine, which includes like... everything?

The comment you quoted of mine wasnt a responce aimed at the OP, scroll to it. I was simply commenting that that i'm under the impression that other then the HDD/card/roms (which i mentioned seperatly) the system doesnt require a powerful 12V and that two years ago 14A was problably sufficient for 1 HDD, 1 Rom, and 1 graphics card. More so for a Pentium 4 system. Again it wasnt aimed at the OP, was aimed at Pete's comment about the strength of the 12V rail.

 

[_xxx_]

Ok, I just wanted to point out that the GFX card is a huge load and that 12V rail he had doesn't sound sufficiant since modern GFX cards are quite power hungry, regardless of the CPU etc.