Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

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dan
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Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by dan » Sat Jun 01, 2013 9:23 am


colin2
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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by colin2 » Sat Jun 01, 2013 1:14 pm

Thanks for this. I want to do an HTPC build soon, and was wondering if it made sense to wait for Haswell.

smilingcrow
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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by smilingcrow » Sat Jun 01, 2013 2:58 pm

The idle power figures seem to be very good; about 12W less than Ivy Bridge.

HFat
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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by HFat » Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:04 pm

Ivy can apparently go under 12W idle to begin with...
The actual CPUs have been idling pretty low for years.

This sort of review will not tell us much about how low idle power consumption that can actually be. They're all about waste.
It may be that it'll end up worse than Ivy depending on the type of build we're talking about and what Intel ends up doing on the motherboard side.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by smilingcrow » Sun Jun 02, 2013 5:46 pm

HFat wrote:Ivy can apparently go under 12W idle to begin with. The actual CPUs have been idling pretty low for years.
This sort of review will not tell us much about how low idle power consumption that can actually be. They're all about waste. It may be that it'll end up worse than Ivy depending on the type of build we're talking about and what Intel ends up doing on the motherboard side.
Not clear what you are suggesting!
The new platform clearly inherently offers significantly lower consumption at idle.
As usual this will still vary depending on which board you choose.
Did I miss something?

QUIET!
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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by QUIET! » Sun Jun 02, 2013 9:02 pm

It will be interesting to see if Haswell offers anything beside a marginal improvement in speed and better integrated graphics in desktop PCs.

With the average PC using maybe an 80+ bronze rated power supply of 450 watts or more, the actual difference at the wall when its idling at under 10% PSU load may be a lot less than the numbers suggest.

By comparison an 80+ gold PSU is a lot cheaper than a motherboard and CPU and will reduce power consumption by a similar amount.

80+ gold PSU, an SSD upgrade and a low end discrete GPU could be done for the same cost and that will probably add more performance than the Haswell upgrade with a minor power penalty.

I still haven't heard of Haswell solving the 23.976hz video issue so I'm assuming they didn't which is bizarre because people use integrated video for HTPCs where lots of performance isn't needed but HD playback is critical. For people just reading email and surfing the web, integrated graphics was good enough and for gamers integrated graphics still sucks so Intel managed to change a lot without actually changing anything.

In laptops Haswell will be a nice upgrade and the Iris graphics will probably be a good alternative to discrete mobile graphics but notebooks always perform like an obsolete desktop when they are brand new.

Color me not compelled.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by johannes » Mon Jun 03, 2013 12:16 am

Apparently the 23.976Hz issue is fixed now: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/inte ... spective/4

Regarding power consumption: The right PSU has definitely a huge influence. My Trinity Mini-ITX systems shows 15W on the wall when idle (with Wifi+Bluetooth disabled) whereas my family's Trinity system (HDD instead of an SSD) uses more than 40W on the wall. Comparetively the 30+W shown for Haswell are not impressive at all.

That's PicoPSU vs. old non-80+ certified PSU, but most 300+W PSUs are not terribly efficient at ~20W DC: 70.2% for Rosewill Silent Night 500 at 30W at the wall, 69.5% for Seasonic G360 at 31W at the wall, 72.7% for the Golden Flower Golden Green 350. And those are Gold or Platinum certified! A 2009 Nexus Value 430 (said to be >80%, but not certified) is 62% efficient at 35W at the wall.

In other words, an old PSU wastes 12W to produce 20W AC and the 72.7% efficient, modern one still wastes 7.5W to produce 20W DC. (Unfortunately I have no good data for the Pico + Level V brick.)

I went a bit off on a tangent, but I think that QUIET! is right that a more efficient PSU will have a higher influence than a new system. With a load power at around 100W for the i5 a PicoPSU should be fine, even more so for the -S or -T versions. (The PicoPSU 160XT is specced for 96W at 12V continuously.)

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by Cistron » Mon Jun 03, 2013 1:46 am

johannes wrote:Regarding power consumption: The right PSU has definitely a huge influence. My Trinity Mini-ITX systems shows 15W on the wall when idle (with Wifi+Bluetooth disabled) whereas my family's Trinity system (HDD instead of an SSD) uses more than 40W on the wall. Comparetively the 30+W shown for Haswell are not impressive at all.

That's PicoPSU vs. old non-80+ certified PSU, but most 300+W PSUs are not terribly efficient at ~20W DC: 70.2% for Rosewill Silent Night 500 at 30W at the wall, 69.5% for Seasonic G360 at 31W at the wall, 72.7% for the Golden Flower Golden Green 350. And those are Gold or Platinum certified! A 2009 Nexus Value 430 (said to be >80%, but not certified) is 62% efficient at 35W at the wall.

In other words, an old PSU wastes 12W to produce 20W AC and the 72.7% efficient, modern one still wastes 7.5W to produce 20W DC. (Unfortunately I have no good data for the Pico + Level V brick.)

I went a bit off on a tangent, but I think that QUIET! is right that a more efficient PSU will have a higher influence than a new system. With a load power at around 100W for the i5 a PicoPSU should be fine, even more so for the -S or -T versions. (The PicoPSU 160XT is specced for 96W at 12V continuously.)
Maybe Haswell is finally an incentive to manufacture more low-power ATX PSUs.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by yakuman » Mon Jun 03, 2013 3:04 am

QUIET! wrote:I still haven't heard of Haswell solving the 23.976hz video issue so I'm assuming they didn't which is bizarre because people use integrated video for HTPCs where lots of performance isn't needed but HD playback is critical.
Missing Remote confirmed the 23.976 has been fixed. Haswell is supposedly the most precise when it comes that issue now. Unfortunately, the website has been down the last two days, so you may not be able to access it now. But the bug with 0-255 full RGB range and HDMI still exists. To me the biggest disappointment is they say HD 4600 is still off limits to madVR's Jinc 3 and higher settings. I bet Intel HD 5x00 can handle it, but those are only available on OEM desktops :evil:.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by smilingcrow » Mon Jun 03, 2013 3:05 am

QUIET! wrote:With the average PC using maybe an 80+ bronze rated power supply of 450 watts or more, the actual difference at the wall when its idling at under 10% PSU load may be a lot less than the numbers suggest.
By comparison an 80+ gold PSU is a lot cheaper than a motherboard and CPU and will reduce power consumption by a similar amount.
It’s not an either or situation if you are building a new system. If you want the lowest power consumption then you address each of the components.
The most impressive results should be the desktop BGA chips with the Iris Pro graphics as you get good integrated graphics performance for its class along with all the other benefits. Not sure if Asus or others will release boards with those soldered on and then there’s the issue of heat-sink mounting due to the die being bare; would make a lot of sense in an ITX system.
The CPUs are very expensive in the UK right now even for a new launch; should drop hopefully.

As for the power consumption it is clearly lower than Ivy Bridge and compared to an AMD system in the same class even more so as the 8 core platform requires a discrete GPU; Trinity is a different class of chip.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by noee » Mon Jun 03, 2013 4:33 am

yakuman wrote: To me the biggest disappointment is they say HD 4600 is still off limits to madVR's Jinc 3 and higher settings. I bet Intel HD 5x00 can handle it, but those are only available on OEM desktops :evil:.
I bet it could be tweaked to work (FSE mode with chroma scaling at Lanczos or SoftCubic, perhaps) depending on scaling factor. madVR has many tweak options and depending on content (SD vs. HD and scaling factor), Jinc3 w/AR and smooth motion is not prohibitively resource-expensive. Currently, there is a bug with the latest drivers that requires the "separate device" option to be disabled for Intel HD graphics, so this may be a show-stopper on the new stuff until that's fixed, not sure.

My lowly HD6570 (fanless) handles SD and HD (24p and interlace material) scaling to 1080p with SmoothMotion, Jinc3 w/AR, no sweat. Of course, scaling HD material to 1080 is a non-issue either way....

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by HFat » Mon Jun 03, 2013 7:46 am

smilingcrow wrote:As for the power consumption it is clearly lower than Ivy Bridge
There's every reason to believe it should be.
But we haven't yet seen a proof. Reviews such as Anandtech's have long been misleading the public about the power consumption of newly released electronics.
More importantly, we don't know whether Intel's decision to get out of the motherboard market won't end up having a larger, negative impact as far as power-efficient desktops are concerned.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by smilingcrow » Mon Jun 03, 2013 8:48 am

HFat wrote:But we haven't yet seen a proof. Reviews such as Anandtech's have long been misleading the public about the power consumption of newly released electronics.
You seem to be suggesting that multiple sites are deliberately misleading people so are you suggesting a conspiracy or do you think they are all acting independently?

What are you basing your opinion about Anandtech on? Throwing around accusations such as that without presenting any data to back it up to me is not helpful. You’re just another random person on the internet so forgive me if I don’t take you seriously without evidence.
HFat wrote:More importantly, we don't know whether Intel's decision to get out of the motherboard market won't end up having a larger, negative impact as far as power-efficient desktops are concerned.
So what is the current delta between Intel boards and the nearest in terms of power consumption? Again without any info to back it up your words are just idle speculation.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by HFat » Mon Jun 03, 2013 9:43 am

You may be here strictly for the information about noise but SPCR is actually one of the only publically-acesssible English-language sites where people have been able over the years to find reliable information about power consumption.
This isn't an accident. SPCR reviews have obviously required serious and unusual commitment.
smilingcrow wrote:You seem to be suggesting that multiple sites are deliberately misleading people so are you suggesting a conspiracy or do you think they are all acting independently?
What are you basing your opinion about Anandtech on?
I am suggesting neither. These are obviously silly alternatives.
The industry is supposed to mislead consumers. It's called advertising.
Anandtech makes no secret about its unrigorous methodologies, its business model, its privildeged relationships with some vendors or indeed about its laughable test results and biased editorializing. Some of the information on Anandtech is useful (mainly for lack of a better alternative) but some is obviously no better than marketing. If this is news to you, sorry but that's not my problem.

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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Jun 03, 2013 10:39 am

Hardware.info compares 33 Haswell boards.

QUIET!
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Re: Intel Haswell here, fully fanless pcs

Post by QUIET! » Mon Jun 03, 2013 11:28 pm

smilingcrow wrote:
QUIET! wrote:With the average PC using maybe an 80+ bronze rated power supply of 450 watts or more, the actual difference at the wall when its idling at under 10% PSU load may be a lot less than the numbers suggest.
By comparison an 80+ gold PSU is a lot cheaper than a motherboard and CPU and will reduce power consumption by a similar amount.
It’s not an either or situation if you are building a new system. If you want the lowest power consumption then you address each of the components.
The most impressive results should be the desktop BGA chips with the Iris Pro graphics as you get good integrated graphics performance for its class along with all the other benefits. Not sure if Asus or others will release boards with those soldered on and then there’s the issue of heat-sink mounting due to the die being bare; would make a lot of sense in an ITX system.
The CPUs are very expensive in the UK right now even for a new launch; should drop hopefully.

As for the power consumption it is clearly lower than Ivy Bridge and compared to an AMD system in the same class even more so as the 8 core platform requires a discrete GPU; Trinity is a different class of chip.
If you are talking about an upgrade it clearly is either or.

Also as Ivy Bridge goes EOL and prices drop to clear the channel, there may be a good value proposition to stick with Ivy for a new build so there is a choice to make.

There will be no desktop bga chips unless you count the NUC and similar boxes but those will be limited by their notebook-like tdps.

I'm glad to hear the 23.976 hz issue was fixed, now Intel can make a decent htpc without adding discrete graphics but they need to release an i3-4225 or something to compete on price with Trinity/Richland.

Lastly, there are going to be a lot of people with a not quite Haswell compatible 80+ or Bronze power supply who work around that by disabling most of the new sleep states and there is no way a computer like that will consume less power than an Ivy with a Gold or Platinum rated PSU.

Haswell is good for "ultra books" and maybe 24-7 servers who idle almost all the time.

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