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Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

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41–50 of 59 posts

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#41
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary in 2013 the kind of person who builds their own PC's is the only one who likely cares about technical specs. If "good enough" is good enough for you there is very little reason to build your own box these days.

On the contrary to your contrary: the kind of person who builds their PC is the kind who customizes how it works when they're using it . There's no automatic assumption that they also harbor green feelings and want lower power consumption for idle/sleep. Hell, many are proud of their beefy 1kW+ power supplies and the ridiculous power load they draw. Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups.…

Anecdata, but my current build has been stalled on the availability of the i7-3770T (the 45W TDP part). I'm already using LV-DIMMs and SSDs.

My actual, active goal is to build a quad core machine with 16 gibibytes of RAM that can draw IOW, you can't assume that those of us who build our machines are all, "Look how big my electric bill is!" wastrels, either.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#42
post #25
post #10

Couldn't Haswell motherboards automatically test the PSU on bootup?

Not likely. The problem is that the PSU will shut down (self protection) if it has less that its minimum current draw. It has to do this because the voltage regulation loop goes unstable if it was designed to have a higher minimum current draw. If the PSU didn't shut down, it would fry things, including itself. Really bad. To test the PSU works at 0.5A would end up shutting down the computer if the PSU didn't work at…

Note: First and foremost it will not power up because the power-on pin (#14, most often green cable) is not connected to ground (any black cable).

https://www.google.de/search?q=atx+power+supply+pinout&c...

The most likely outcome though is that the supply will just power on and idle without any load. Rapid transients on the rails (say from 100W to ~0W) might cause the over voltage crowbar to trip, though.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#43
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary to your contrary: the kind of person who builds their PC is the kind who customizes how it works when they're using it . There's no automatic assumption that they also harbor green feelings and want lower power consumption for idle/sleep. Hell, many are proud of their beefy 1kW+ power supplies and the ridiculous power load they draw. Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups.…

On the other hand, you can't automatically assume they don't care about it at all. I build most of my desktops, and I certainly want to reduce power usage when I'm not using them. Enough so that I'd pay for a power supply that supports the lower power states. Not everybody who builds their own PC is doing so to make a ridiculously over powered system.

[deleted]

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#44
post #25
post #10

Couldn't Haswell motherboards automatically test the PSU on bootup?

Not likely. The problem is that the PSU will shut down (self protection) if it has less that its minimum current draw. It has to do this because the voltage regulation loop goes unstable if it was designed to have a higher minimum current draw. If the PSU didn't shut down, it would fry things, including itself. Really bad. To test the PSU works at 0.5A would end up shutting down the computer if the PSU didn't work at…

Ah, yes, the other side of the Halting Problem: not only can you not tell if your program will ever halt, but you also can't tell if your program has been externally halted.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#45
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary to your contrary: the kind of person who builds their PC is the kind who customizes how it works when they're using it . There's no automatic assumption that they also harbor green feelings and want lower power consumption for idle/sleep. Hell, many are proud of their beefy 1kW+ power supplies and the ridiculous power load they draw. Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups.…

>Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups. I'd be proud of my bitcoin mining setup too if it could violate the laws of thermodynamics.

On the opposite side, if you had an energy creating bitcoin setup, why would you care about the bitcoins?

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#46
post #25
post #10

Couldn't Haswell motherboards automatically test the PSU on bootup?

Not likely. The problem is that the PSU will shut down (self protection) if it has less that its minimum current draw. It has to do this because the voltage regulation loop goes unstable if it was designed to have a higher minimum current draw. If the PSU didn't shut down, it would fry things, including itself. Really bad. To test the PSU works at 0.5A would end up shutting down the computer if the PSU didn't work at…

There actually shouldn't be any issue at all with the motherboard testing this. Just set a flag in the EEPROM that your testing the C6/C7 states, and try it, if the CPU exits C6/C7 with the flag set, it passed. If the system goes through a normal boot with the C6/C7 flag still set, it knows that it failed to exit C6/C7 (the supply cut out). This is basically the same procedure many motherboards use to detect if the over-clocking settings you tried were too agressive and caused the system to fail to boot.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#47
post #30

> As it appears, end-users will either have disable low-power states of Haswell or get a new power-supply units compatible with the new Intel chip. Errr, is not like many end users update their desktop PC with new CPUs anyway. And those very few that do, they also buy a new motherboard, so to get a new power supply is nothing significant in comparison.

Everyone will need to buy a new Haswell motherboard. Unless the reports I've read months ago changed, Haswell is going to be on a new socket.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#48
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it borderline negligent to use anything other than ECC RAM in any machine where you care about not corrupting your data with a flipped DRAM bit.

Except it's virtually impossible to find a CPU that supports ECC. I've used ECC in every one of my machines for the last decade or so - except for the very last once since it's was impossible to get without spending a crazy amount of money (xeon processor).

It's not virtually impossible. It may be virtually impossible in crappy cheap boards from Taiwan, but if you're buying cheap parts then you're likely not making money off the results that you're producing.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#49
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's virtually impossible to find a CPU that supports ECC. I've used ECC in every one of my machines for the last decade or so - except for the very last once since it's was impossible to get without spending a crazy amount of money (xeon processor).

It's not virtually impossible. It may be virtually impossible in crappy cheap boards from Taiwan, but if you're buying cheap parts then you're likely not making money off the results that you're producing.

It's not the board that is the problem, it's the CPU. Only xeon CPUs have ECC support, and they are just too expensive.

Re: Intel Core i “Haswell” CPUs May Require New Power Supply Units for PCs

#50
post #30

> As it appears, end-users will either have disable low-power states of Haswell or get a new power-supply units compatible with the new Intel chip. Errr, is not like many end users update their desktop PC with new CPUs anyway. And those very few that do, they also buy a new motherboard, so to get a new power supply is nothing significant in comparison.

Everyone will need to buy a new Haswell motherboard. Unless the reports I've read months ago changed, Haswell is going to be on a new socket.

Correct. Haswell is LGA 1150, SB/IB were LGA 1155.
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