Help me understand the need for "Haswell Ready" PSUs - I have a G3258 OC rig.

[VirtualLarry]

I think I might have figured out my reboots. I'm using an older (4+ years old) EarthWatts 500W, that is NOT "Haswell Ready".

I'm using a discrete GPU (7950), but that has ULPS ("ZeroCore") to reduce power usage. I also have a singular case fan, and a 3TB Toshiba HDD. (OS is on an M500 240GB SSD).

I'm in the middle of something, but I'm going to reboot, and check my BIOS / UEFI settings.

What do you need to disable to prevent crashes due to PSU issues with Haswell? C6/C7 states? Anything else?

I thought I had read that as long as you had a case fan, or a HDD, this issue wouldn't apply, but I'm going to do a thorough test just to make sure that this isn't the issue. If I had some more money available, I would jump on today's ShellShocker at Newegg, they have an EVGA 500 B Bronze "Haswell Ready" PSU for $35 with a $10 rebate. Might still get one later on for testing.

Edit: Some answers here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1778552/haswell-ready-psu.html

My case fan isn't connected directly to the PSU, I don't think, so I guess that doesn't help.

Edit: There was a setting called "Dummy Load" or something like that. Claimed that if the PSU caused lockup or reset, to "Enable". Strange that they didn't seem to have any sort of C6/C7 state setting, but instead had a "Dummy load" setting.

My motherboard is a GA-H81M-DS2V, with F5 BIOS.

I guess I'll see if that fixes things. I re-clocked it back to 3.8.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Haswell ready is just marketing garbage. As long as a PSU has a 24-pin ATX power connector and a 4 or 8 pin supplemental CPU power connector, it's Haswell-ready.

So, every PSU since a long time ago.

Having PSUs that were certified for certain processors was a big deal around the time the Pentium 4 came out (I may be wrong, but I think iit was the first platform to use the additional 12v CPU power line) and when individual CPUs kept using more power, it was important on multi-rail PSUs (where a 300w PSU might only be able to deliver 150w to the CPU.)

There were also a couple different kinds of 12v CPU power connectors, so that mattered (if the PSU didn't have the right one.)

But everything's been standardized forever now. It's just marketing because "builders" who didn't really know what they were looking for and why got used to seeing "{cpu_name}-certified!" on their PSU labels.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Haswell ready is just marketing garbage. As long as a PSU has a 24-pin ATX power connector and a 4 or 8 pin supplemental CPU power connector, it's Haswell-ready.

I think that you missed the memo on Haswell's new C6/C7 power states, and how they can cause issues with older group-regulated PSU designs (that don't use a DC-DC topology), when the CPU 12V load goes to almost nil, and the +5V is still heavily loaded (USB devices).

"Haswell Ready" is more than just marketing, there are design differences in those PSUs to cope with Haswell's low-power states.

 

[kmmatney]

I live near a Microcenter and have bought 4 G3258 combos, all overclocked, as upgrades to older systems. All the PSUs are old. One of them is a Antec Earthwatts 380W, while another is using a PSU that came with the case (although it's a PowerMan (InWin) brand, which is decent). In any case, they are all working fine with 4.3 Ghz overclocks on systems with the stock heatsink, and another one overclocked to 4.5 using an EVO 212. They all have the MSI PC-Mate motherboard, as that is what comes with the Microcenter $89-$99 combo.

What is your overclock speed? What voltage? The PC-Mate motherboards automatically up the voltage when you change the multiplier. I think the automatic voltage increase is more than what it needed, but it's been stable.

It's always worth trying out another PSU if you have access to one, though.

I did have one of my systems come unstable when I tried to use mismatched memory. I had a 1 GB and 2GB stick. On an AMD system I have, this runs fine, in dual-channel mode even. With the G3258 it would crash when stressign the system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There's a motherboard BIOS setting for dealing with pre-Haswell PSUs. I set that option in my GA-H81M-DS2V BIOS, and it hasn't crashed / rebooted since.

I'm going to tentatively declare my problem as "solved", and my non-"Haswell Ready" PSU as the cause.

 

[Ketchup]

Great to hear that it's stable. Would you mind telling us what this state is? I see the C6/C7 state option, is that it?

 

[VirtualLarry]

It wasn't labelled with "C6/C7". In the help for the setting, it mentioned a "Dummy load", I think. I'll have to reboot and check what it was called.

 

[Ketchup]

OK, probably this one:
Power Loading
Enables or disables dummy load. When the power supply is at low load, a self-protection will activate causing
it to shutdown or fail. If this occurs, please set to
Enabled
.
Auto
lets the BIOS automatically configure this
setting. (Default: Auto)

 

[VirtualLarry]

OK, probably this one:
Power Loading
Enables or disables dummy load. When the power supply is at low load, a self-protection will activate causing
it to shutdown or fail. If this occurs, please set to
Enabled
.
Auto
lets the BIOS automatically configure this
setting. (Default: Auto)

Yep, that's the one. I set that to "Enabled".

 

[BonzaiDuck]

There's a motherboard BIOS setting for dealing with pre-Haswell PSUs. I set that option in my GA-H81M-DS2V BIOS, and it hasn't crashed / rebooted since.

I'm going to tentatively declare my problem as "solved", and my non-"Haswell Ready" PSU as the cause.

If it happens again, scrutinize your BIOS for other motherboard features that are turned on (enabled) but not needed.

You may or may not remember, but I went through these troubles last year. It could be the same symptom with a different cause, or the same symptom with the same cause.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, apparently that wasn't the total fix. My PC rebooted again.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, apparently that wasn't the total fix. My PC rebooted again.

Well . . . . you could either start or end with my first suggestion.

I have no desire to sadistically put you through hoops and suffer on this.

Certainly, your PSU has aged -- that is -- it's had a long life to date.

I'd guess you have a power-supply tester; you've been at this stuff a long time.

Before I replaced any components, I'd inventory all my drivers, get all the updates, and reinstall one after the other.

How long is it stable between these reboots? Again -- you may not remember -- but my sig system would reset/reboot as frequently as 5 days (one extreme) and after a month's time (the other extreme). The average and most frequent observation was 10 days. I was running the system 24/7. I DID replace all the drivers. the PSU was an 850W Seasonic, and no indication that it was going south. Every hardware replacement I tried did not end it. It wasn't the overclock settings, either. I disabled the spare controllers on the motherboard, changed the memory configuration to XMP, and disabled the onboard USB3 controller -- among some other tweaks. It just . . . . went away . . .

Oh. Another thought. If it's overclocked, it may not be the clock setting per se. What about the VRM and Duty Control features? I set mine to "Extreme." Also, there's a balance between Offset and LLC settings, which can contribute to low-volt idle instability. In my case, I think it was a resource conflict for too many enabled components, but I'll never know now for sure.