ATX 12V Power Connector

i bought a motherboard that has the regular ATX power connector (20pin), and a 12V power connector (4pin, square...)... not the 4pin inline molex connector

anyways, my power supply doesn't have it.... so i'm currently running my server without it... and it works, stable

should my power supply be be one of the first things i upgrade? how important is this? and.... what's it used for?

I would recommend upgrading your power supply b4 anything else. I'm wondering how your even getting you board to work without it...

There's a few peeps out there that have not connected the extra 12V and had nothing but issues so I would recommend upgrading PSU as well. However before I knew of such a thing my friends Asus A7M266D had it. The store he bought it from put it together and didn't connect the extra 12V and it ran fine for over a year till he bought a RAID card and I connected it for the first time upon seeing the connector on the board. I was amazed to see it on the board as at the time I thought only intels had it.

Psyko

It usually helps in the overall stability of your rig, especially for overclocking. They sell a cheapo adaptor that plugs into an extra 4 pin molex that will allow you to provide the MoBo with the extra 12V supply. This will probably get you by for awhile but you should plan on investing in a bigger & more up to date PSU at some point.

Regards, Balrog