Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

[boondocks]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

Oh crap, we're going to have to go through the same chipset problems as P67? I was hoping to upgrade right away to a shiny new Z87 UD5H. I would do it anyway if Gigabyte would send me a new board when the revised chipset comes out.

I read somewhere that the USB 3.0 bug wasn't going to affect the board headers, just the peripheral connectors. Anyone know if this is true?
I can get by fine with just the board headers (I'm hoping for two again on the UD5H like with Z77 since I have only 3.0 front ports on my CL case).


Speaking of Z87 I'm hoping Sin will have the new UD5H reviewed by release date so I/we can scope it out. He sounded pretty positive about it when I PM'd him so I hope it happens just like his review with Z77 last year, which played no small part in me getting that board.

[wazza300]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

haswell will be another ivybridge paste ****up from what ive read aswell,fine if you can delid it but temps were 95c @4.5ghz in one test,again its still early days so not 100% sure

plus you might need a new psu due to the low power sates of the cpu but theres talk of an option to turn the feature off in the bios

[profJim]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

For What It's Worth Department: Are you thinking of waiting for Broadwell in 2014?

Core i7-4770K: Haswell's Performance, Previewed -- March 18, 2013
from: A Taste Of Things To Come - Tom's Hardware (conclusion)

[boondocks]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

haswell will be another ivybridge paste ****up from what ive read aswell,fine if you can delid it but temps were 95c @4.5ghz in one test,again its still early days so not 100% sure

plus you might need a new psu due to the low power sates of the cpu but theres talk of an option to turn the feature off in the bios

Not really worried about the low power states. But I think my psu will be OK.

For What It's Worth Department: Are you thinking of waiting for Broadwell in 2014?

Core i7-4770K: Haswell's Performance, Previewed -- March 18, 2013
from: A Taste Of Things To Come - Tom's Hardware (conclusion)

We know from our talks with motherboard vendors at this year’s CES that you’ll be able to buy Haswell in
LGA 1150 trim, but that its successor, Broadwell, is going to be BGA-only (meaning it’ll ship soldered onto
motherboards). Now, it’s possible that Skylake, the architecture to follow Broadwell, will see Intel re-
introduce an upgradeable interface. However, Core i7-4770K is going to get a lot of attention, if only
because of its position as the last flagship before we’re subject to less flexibility.

Everything is moving that way. In ten years we'll look back and reminisce about overclocking our cpu's & gpu's. 1500W psu's will seem quaint.

[parsec]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

Personally, I have never changed/upgraded a CPU, since I get the best one I need from the start. But for hardcore CPU OC enthusiasts, BGA soldered CPUs will be a huge issue. Given Intel going that way, that could give AMD a great opportunity to fill that void, if they care to do so.

IMO, the change to un-replaceable CPUs on mother boards will become a logistics nightmare regarding problems and defects. Imagine the problems that occur with boards, that require a RMA. The CPU is fine, but the board has a defective DIMM slot, etc. Is the board manufacture responsible for the cost of the CPU which is easily equal to or more than the cost of the board? The board manufacture has purchased the chipset and now the CPU from Intel (I assume), so are they stuck with the CPUs which may not be able to be reused? Would we want one of these new boards that has a CPU that was removed from a returned board, if possible? The same thing goes for a (rare) CPU defect, they will need to replace the entire board.

We've all read about users that RMA a board to fix an issue, which is not fixed with the new board, since the problem is something else. Not to mention incompetent support personnel that issue an RMA for no real reason. Will this new situation cause board manufactures to restrict their RMA policies? The same thing may apply to retailers. I think we'll need to read the fine print about the RMA and warranty policies of these new "hybrid" boards very carefully.

[wazza300]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

bent cpu socket pins will be a thing of the past with broadwell

I think its a rather silly idea though soldering the cpu onto the motherboard

[parsec]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

One thing that has not at all been addressed in the few articles I've seen on this topic, is why Intel is doing this. What is Intel's motivation in doing that? What is the benefit to Intel, or the need to do this? Is there a technical improvement behind this we are unaware of?

More significantly, what is the benefit to the end user, the customer? Mobile PCs have had BGA type processors for a long time, if not always. We simply accept that as normal, a necessity, but it that true? Question, are AMD mobile CPUs BGA? I would think so.

Does Intel dislike manufacturing LGA type processors? Is BGA easier, cheaper? Or is it simply having two different final fabrication types (BGA and LGA) that is more costly? Will Intel Xeon enterprise processors be sold as BGA only?

OTOH, the LGA type interface suffers from several drawbacks. The tiny contact points in a LGA socket are poor conductors of power. Many pins must be used to supply adequate current, and ground paths. This is the pinmap of 1/4th of the Intel Sandy Bridge processor's socket 1155 LGA layout. Each pin corresponds with a "land" on the processor:



All the red VCC lands are for power into the CPU. The dark green VSS lands are grounds. Of the 1,155 lands on a Sandy Bridge CPU, over 250 are used to supply power, and over 350 are used as ground paths. The sum of the power and ground lands are a bit over one half of the total number of lands. Imagine the corresponding totals on a socket 2011 CPU!

Using the BGA interface could reduce the number of contacts needed for power, by providing higher current capacity connections. The mobile Sandy Bridge processors have the same package size as the desktop processors do, but their BGA package actually has more contacts, 1,224. The FCPGA package variation has 988 contacts. So much for that theory...

Well, Haswell is socket 1150, so what Broadwell will be remains to be seen.

[wazza300]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

could be using bga to stop us delidding??? esp if they carry on using cheap paste between the h/s and die

[parsec]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

Well, IMO I doubt that Intel is worried about the few people that are delidding IB CPUs. Even if those CPUs fail and are RMA'd, I imagine Intel could tell on most of them, and deny the RMA.

Frankly, some of the IB delidding threads I've read lately now say that the Intel TIM is not the problem. Intel has used very good TIM on their stock coolers, either Shin Etsu or Dow Corning, that has great specs. Same TIM used with IB. The problem is the gap between the processor die and the bottom of the IHS, which is not consistent and to large in some cases. So some IB CPUs have a relatively large amount of TIM between the die and IHS, due to a large gap between the two. Since the IHS is literally glued in place, how are IHS to die tolerances maintained or checked?

Regardless, the use of TIM instead of solder is a bad idea for multiple reasons. I'd really love to know Intel's reason for doing this.

[boondocks]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

Right, the quality of the TIM Intel uses is not bad at all according to testing results I've seen. The heat problem with many IB cpu's is because of the gap between the processor and IHS. But many of us that delidded decided to take the TIM a step further and use one of the liquid metal type TIM's such as CooLaboratory Liquid Pro. Delidding for me was an instant >20c decrease in load temps.

I am curious to see what Intel does with Haswell in regards to the IHS/die gap. IMO it's stupid to sell a K series cpu with a built in "defect". But if Intel continues with non soldered IHS with Haswell and I get another "heat monster" I won't hesitate to delid again if necessary.....I just hope it's not.

On another Haswell related front, I saw a list up at Anand's site with lists of Corsair & Seasonic psu's that are considered capable for the C6/C7 deep sleep states. Fortunately my two Seasonic 1000w are listed.

The other thing is going to be the USB 3.0 "bug" which if I understand this correctly is related only to some very few flash drives connected when the pc goes into deep sleep states. Even then it's only a matter of restarting whatever program/process is affected so I don't see it as a big deal for me personally.....and I don't use any USB HDD storage either so I think I'm covered.

----boondocks, not looking for reasons to put off upgrading.

[parsec]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

Frankly, I doubt Intel considers that a defect exists in these IB CPUs, concerning their heat dissipation capabilities. When do we really see this defect? When CPU stress testing for long time periods, with all cores and threads at 100% usage at OC levels of 4GHz+. Intel would consider both of those situations abnormal, IMO.

Sure, these are the 'K' unlocked CPUs, but by the specs, an i7-3770K has a max turbo speed spec of 3.9GHz. We also tend to forget that turbo boost is meant to be sustained only for short periods of time, and not equally on all cores and threads. The unlimited turbo boost times our UEFI/BIOS have programmed into them are not following the true Turbo specs, but we've had them at least since socket 1366 CPUs, so take them for granted. If your i7-3770K switched back to 3.5GHz after 30 seconds or less at 4.5GHz, as Turbo is supposed to work, it would operate much cooler.

I was wondering if the IB Xeon line of enterprise processors also use TIM instead of solder. But none of them are unlocked, and the best 22nm Xeon is spec'd at 3.7 - 4.1GHz, but I would bet that enterprise boards do not have unlimited turbo boost time settings in their BIOS. So even under high loads, they likely don't get as hot as we see our 'K' CPUs when stress testing.

OTOH, is there an uproar in the enterprise world with IB Xeon's running at high temperatures? I don't know, perhaps there is.

[boondocks]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

I suppose Intel has their reasons and who knows, maybe it has more to do with longevity. Maybe the move away from soldering the IHS had unintended consequences. Who knows?
But-
We want the best Intel can give us for the kind of cash we're laying down.

[wazza300]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

pretty sure haswell will be using cheap paste same as ivybridge,will be interesting to see if the ivybridge-e 2011 socket chips will follow suit? I doubt it though

[boondocks]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

pretty sure haswell will be using cheap paste same as ivybridge,will be interesting to see if the ivybridge-e 2011 socket chips will follow suit? I doubt it though

wazza from everything I've seen the TIM Intel uses both in the cpu and on the coolers is top quality stuff.
It's not the TIM that's the problem, it's the chip to IHS gap. Paste can't transfer heat over a "wide" gap, it's just meant as an interface material between objects. You want it to be only as thick as needed to get the job done. But you know all that......
Some people (like us!) got IB cpu's with a large gap between the IHS & chip and it's too much to expect of TIM to bridge that gap. Plus from what I read around the net a lot of the IHS are not anywhere near flat and that adds to the problem. Is why I sanded my IHS flat as well as delidded. The top of my IHS wasn't too bad but apparently some are way concave.

[boondocks]

Re: Haswell Is Coming,Who's Upgrading?

wazza you seen the Asus Z87 board pics? They went with gold this time around.......I haven't made up my mind if I'm sticking with Gigabyte or not this time around. Will wait and see what the new Gigabyte EUFI bios brings to the table, they have been so far behind Asus all along and if they can just get it right this time I'll be happy.
Not that I would jump ship entirely....I still own 4 Gigabyte boards after all.