(11-08-2013, 04:50 AM)supraman97 Wrote: What's special about a "Haswell" anyway? Is it a hardware family, architecture, or reference to manufacturing plant or something? I've gathered the "k" on (newer at least) intel's mean that they support overclocking....
Haswell is the codename for the 4th gen Intel Core ("i") processors. I believe it requires an ATX 2.3 compatible power supply and it is a little different from the Ivy Bridge (3rd gen) because they moved the voltage regulator onto the chip from the motherboard. This change allowed Intel to make a new low-power sleep state where the processor is basically idle but can occasionally do a mini-wake to retrieve updated data from the internet. Basically it's so you can open your laptop and find the latest data downloaded/displayed. Mostly for mobile.
The interesting tidbit about this feature on the desktop processors is that some of the ATX 2.3 power supplies weren't designed to send that low of a voltage on the applicable rail(s) and it will trigger a protective shutdown. This led to a new designator of "Haswell ready" PSUs, which is not part of the 2.3 spec. I personally think that there were probably 1 or 2 brands that did this and the hype was mostly FUD, but in theory it could be problematic. There's always a workaround where you can disable the C6 sleep state in your BIOS if you have such a power supply. Most desktops don't need C6 anyway.