FSP Reveals its Haswell Ready PSUs

Status
Not open for further replies.

jrstriker12

Honorable
Jun 13, 2013
100
0
10,680


You might have to make an adjustment in the BIOS to disable the sleep state.

http://techreport.com/review/24897/the-big-haswell-psu-compatibility-list

"Before we proceed, we should be clear about one thing: you don't, strictly speaking, need one of these "Haswell-ready" PSUs to build a Haswell system. Corsair told us that it "fully expects" motherboard makers to let users disable the new low-power power state in the firmware. Cooler Master went even further, stating that, to its knowledge, "all mainboard vendors" will disable the new low-power state in their boards by default. In other words, you may never encounter any issues even if you pair a Haswell platform with an incompatible power supply."
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Technically speaking, you don't / shouldn't.

Practically speaking, there are enough PSUs that have a tendency to misbehave at low loads mainly due to being built around the assumption that no PCs use that little power to make Haswell certification a marketable gimmick.

Gotta appreciate the irony of having to switch from being particularly worried about performance at high power to worrying about performance at low power that got neglected due to almost no computers using that little power before.
 

makaveli316

Distinguished
Jun 1, 2010
250
0
18,780
Compatible psus for certain processors.....oh God.
So those idiots from Intel didn't only make a new socket and force me to buy a new motherboard, but now they force people to buy new psu?
 

Andrew Boult

Honorable
Jun 12, 2013
6
0
10,520
They are not "special Haswell" compatible processors, my 4 year old psu works fine in low power state.
It's forcing the companies that build psu's to make a quality product that may cost more to build but these are the same psu's that usually get the silver gold and platinum ratings and are more energy efficient. Most people that build gaming machines will already have bought psu that'll work just fine because they offer a more stable pc
 
Only extremely light systems would/could be effected by this issue. After all, Have you ever seen a power supply idle at 0.6 watts?

1 or 2 high performance hard drives would fix the issue as they would make up any required minimums for you.

If a system was lets say mitx(since the boards take even less power) with no video card(even an AMD card with zerocore takes more power than the cpu in its dead idle state in this case) and add a single SSD. You may be able to hit the limits on some power supplies, but a majority of newer power supplies are efficient and fully functional at low loads.

My ITX system can idle as low as about 21 watts if I trust APC's software for my UPS. So the DC load is even lower and I am willing to bet it is not that efficient at these loads. No problems for the current 300 watt FSP in the system.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

They aren't forcing people to buy PSUs compatible with a certain processor. They are forcing people to buy PSUs that behave properly at very low power levels many poorly made PSUs cannot handle.

I'm betting there are about just as many PSUs that fail to reliably deliver anywhere close to their apparent output power rating as there are PSUs that have problems with Haswell's extremely low idle power.

This merely raises the bar on minimum quality one little notch - PSU manufacturers cannot afford to overlook their PSU's low-output stability anymore. Thankfully for us, many of the changes required to improve low-power stability are the same that are required for high-power stability.
 

JohnUSA

Distinguished
May 14, 2008
81
0
18,640
In my opinion Haswell is a dud and I will never buy it.
I will wait for the Broadwell to be released and I really hope that Intel will not botch up this cpu like they did with the poor Haswell.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

Broadwell is expected to be little more than a shrunk Haswell with updated structures and even more low-power embedded/mobile-oriented enhancements in mostly BGA format. If you swear to skip Haswell because you disagree with Intel putting all their mainstream efforts in embedded/mobile, you likely will want to skip Broadwell where all indications point towards Intel pushing embedded and mobile even harder.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.