Upcoming Intel Haswell performance

[John P. Myers]

If you get your freak on by an extreme low power state you may need to get a new power supply if you want to use the new C6/C7 low power states of Intel's upcoming Haswell processors. These new power states require a power supply that can maintain a minimum current load of 0.05A on the CPU exclusive 12V2 rail.

The previous ATX12V v2.3 design guidelines called for a minimum load of 0.5A on the CPU power rail, so a lot of older and budget power supplies will likely not meet the new specification, resulting in stability or shutdown issues once the system enters the C6/C7 power state.

Please note this can occur on the power rail specifically for the CPU. Other components in your system such as drives, GPUs, fans, etc. do not feed off of this rail to raise the minimum draw. To prevent a system shutdown you can simply disable the C6/C7 powerstates in BIOS. No true cruncher would ever allow their CPU to hit a low power state anyway

[DrPop]

...No true cruncher would ever allow their CPU to hit a low power state anyway

Haha! So true. Which reminds me, they should be a lot more concerned about LOAD power draw and not idle power draw. What's the matter with these office types that only use 5% of their CPU power?