Cooler Master PSUs are Haswell-Ready

As with many new product launches of this scale, there has been a bit of misinformation spread regarding the recently launched line of 4th Generation Intel processors codenamed Haswell. This has been centered on PSU compatibility with these processors. We would like to clarify the situation to calm and reassure our customers and partners that they will be able to upgrade safely. A full list of Cooler Master power supplies is listed below. Please refer to these quick facts that the public should be aware of.

• Most power supplies don't support Haswell - False
• I need a Haswell certified power supply to build a Haswell system - False
• Haswell only works with DC-DC Power Supplies - False
• Haswell only works with 80+ Gold and better Power Supplies - False
• Haswell requires a second 12V rail and doesn't work with single rail Power Supplies - False
• On some older power supplies, Haswell consumes 5W more in idle mode - True

Among other improvements of Intel's latest Core Processors, power consumption in idle mode has been greatly reduced from around 6W to less than 1W. This might cause some older power supplies to shut the system off when the CPU enters idle mode, or prevent the system from waking up out of sleep mode. To our knowledge all mainboard vendors will disable this advanced power saving mode by default, and no customer upgrading to Haswell should experience any issues whatsoever.

Nevertheless, should customers experience problems or would like to enable the advanced power saving mode on older power supplies that might not support it, there is a simple fix. Simply add a single silent case fan to the system and connect it to the power supply. It should provide enough additional load to keep the system running in an advanced power saving mode.

The only disadvantage would be that power savings in idle mode on such a system would only amount to around 2-3W instead of ~5W.

Last updated: Apr 7, 2020 at 12:08 pm CDT