Looks like I will get my hands on a free motherboard, CPU, and RAM that I could upgrade my server with. The CPU is much faster, so it would help with unrar, par2, transcode, etc. But it's an industrial motherboard and doesn't seem to have a 24-pin power connector. I just see a 4 pin connector. Does anyone know if this would work with a standard ATX power supply using the +4 from the 20+4 pin connector? The documentation isn't very clear.

 

It's currently being used with an external power supply, but I want to use my existing internal ATX power supply.

 

http://www.asrock.com/ipc/overview.asp?Model=IMB-180

 

 

 

Took a look at the PDF and they call out only the 4 pin as (4-pin  ATX12V1). This is low-power consumption setup taking SO-DIMMs & mobile Haswell so maybe that is all the power it needs. Curious what the draw will be with drives on it.

No, it won't work with the +4 from the 20+4 connector; but it will work with the 4-pin CPU auxiliary power connector from an ATX12V power supply.    The board has built-in voltage regulators to provide the required voltages from a DC input of between 9 & 19 volts on the 4-pin DC input connector.    Since the CPU aux power connector is a 12v output on a standard ATX power supply, this is within that range, and should work fine.

 

The only question is whether there's adequate current capacity on that output -- but since it's the only draw you'll have on your ATX power supply, that shouldn't be an issue.

 

You will, of course, have to provide a method to turn the power supply on and off, since this board doesn't support the PS#ON signaling normally done through the 24-pin ATX connector.

 

 

Thanks for taking a look guys.

 

garycase: Could I short that pin on the power supply so that it's just always on? (With something like this: http://amzn.to/1G7c8qP) I think the motherboard does respond to a power switch, so there would be a switch for the server. I could then use the external power supply switch (on the back) if I really needed to turn off the power supply.

 

Yes, that little gadget would work perfectly.

 

In case anyone is curious or finding this later via a search, this all works perfectly fine. My power supply had an EATX12V 4+4 pin 12V connector (pretty standard), so I used one of those 4 pin connectors (after testing to verify that the pin layout was correct). I also used the little jumper linked above.

 

The only down side is that the HDDs spin up immediate after turning the power supply on because the supply is not switched by the MB. Otherwise, the system functions as normal.