Hey i just bought the gigabyte ud4p and the intel i7 860. only problem is my psu which is 500w only has a 4 pin header. Will it be safe even though the motherboard has an 8 pin header connection, and there was no black cap over 4 pins to say that 4 pins are safe as well.
Can't say for sure on that board...but I have used several 8pin boards with 4pin power supplies without issue.
Core 2 systems use 4-pin or 8-pin connections, using 8-pin was optional. With i7s, I'm pretty sure 8-pin is mandatory. You should really be buying a new PSU.
It isn't a real i7, just the 1156 version. It uses less power than a phenom, and the boards need less too since there are fewer PCIe channels. And I know for a fact that you can run an overclocked phenom x4, an overclocked 3870, a hardware RAID controller, a software raid controller, a dual TV tuner, a dedicated audio card, and a dedicated network card on a board powered by just 4 of the 8 pins. I would not be at all concerned to run a 1156-based system off of the same power. My only concern is that gigabyte may have put in some kind of "safety feature" to prevent you from doing it. The only way to find out is to try; you won't hurt anything if it does not work.
Dont mean to hijack but this thread seems done for, and its on topic...is there likley to be any performance gain from using the 8-pin vs 4-pin assuming the system runs fine off the 4 pin?
no direct performance gain, but i've seen 4-pins melt to the board due to overheating such that they become permanently attached. That's what you get if you overclock a high TDP CPU and don't use 8 pins.
Note: if you are using that much power, you also have to worry about the CPU socket melting to the processor pins.
