- Joined
- Feb 12, 2012
- Messages
- 253
- Motherboard
- MSI Z77A-G45
- CPU
- i5-3570K
- Graphics
- GTX 660
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
As I got your attention now with this title, I should explain why this title.
I would say that most people who build Hackintoshes or PCs for that matter, thought that the 4th generation "Intel core i" processors were just merely somewhat faster, more economical in power consumption, and so the best choice.
Yes, so you would think. Don't get me wrong, 5% increase over Ivy Bridge: well done. More economical power consumption, more sleeping states.... yeah well.... let me get back to that in a bit. Keep reading.
In general a lot of buying advice is about motherboards, CPUs or RAM sometimes, but what I think, a lot of people forget or do not realize, is that Haswell makes extra demands.
I'm not here to advise you on which motherboard you should buy. But there is general advice about processors, and power supplies.
If we look at the current line up of Intel core i processors, the lines are mostly clearly drawn.
- Core i3-4xxx are dual core or two core processors.
- Core i5-4xxx are quad core, quad thread processors.
- Core i7-4xxx are quad core, 8 thread processors.
There are exceptions obviously. But in general this is what the line up looks like.
Let's start with a general typecast of these processors.
Core i3: general office use, light computer use. Internet, a movie. For this, it is more than enough. GeekBench score around 6000.
Core i5: With this you can do picture and photo editing with sufficient power. GB scores around 9500.
Core i7: The power houses, for those who really need it. GB scores around 15000.
I show the GeekBench scores to give you a rough idea on how much power there is in the 2 or 4 core machines. So this should give you a good direction of what you should look at.
After the processor's name, there can be a suffix. For instance, the core i5-4570S. The suffix values have different meanings.
- the processors with a K suffix are unlocked, meaning you can overclock them to higher ratios then what their brethren without the K can do. It means though that when these processors are overclocked, their life span is shorter. Heat is what normally kills some electrical component and when you overclock something that is supposed to run on 3.5GHz to 4.2 or even 4.5GHz, and only get there by pumping more volts in it... well you can see where it leads: more power, more heat...
- processors with a S suffix are reduced power consumption chips. Intel likes to call it optimized
but fact is that if you compare a (typical) power consumption of the S processors of 65W against the normal 84W or more... you can simply said do with a smaller cooler, a smaller case. (I'm running the core i5-4570s in what I think is one of the smallest cases (12"x11"x2") and it is fine in there.)
- then we have some oddity, the T variant. In core i5 you can get these T processors, but they have even more reduced power consumption (and obviously also less GeekBench score). In this case the i5 processors do not have 4 but 2 cores. The power is reduced to a mere 35W.
There are also differences in the same processors (i.e. core i5-4570, core i5-4570S and 4570K) with respect to normal operating frequency, turbo boost, hyperthreading and what have you not.
You will see 'boxed' and 'tray' versions of these processors. I prefer boxed versions, for a few reasons. They are normally just a few dollars more, but give you a proven fan that is designed to deal with the heat, and you get a better warranty.
Integrated graphics
Only you can decide at some point whether the integrated graphics on a processor is enough for you or not. A heavy gamer, or video editor will certainly drop in one or two good graphics cards.
Haswell incorporates (mostly) the HD4600 IGP integrated graphics processor. Only HD4600 is currently supported in Mavericks and I think HD5000 too.
The HD4000 Ivy Bridge IGP is outpaced by the HD4600 by 30% more power. The HD5000 brings even more. If you are not sure the IGP gives you enough power, then leave open a possibility to upgrade your system with a discrete card later.
Motherboards
Next we need to put the CPU in a socket on a motherboard. Intel decided that we didn't have enough choices in chipsets so for Haswell we can now choose from 6 different variations of it. You recognize the chipset often on the board name like GA-Z87M-UD5H or something. The Z87 is the chipset.
The first character is the chipset type (i.e. Z), the second (8) the Intel chipset series.
- The B85 and Q85 chipset type are actually more geared towards office use where special BIOS settings can allow the PC to be remote controlled and maintained. It's also called vPro. Just so you know. There are plenty of builds with for instance the B85 chipset type. But I am not sure Apple would use them.
- The H87 chipset often is used in home PCs or Hackintoshes, and offer a lot of features in terms of number of SATA ports, USB ports etc. However, H81 chipset is used in mostly very small (ITX size) boards, and have a very limited amount of expansion possibilities, SATA ports and USB ports. For their purpose they are normally fine though and don't need more than these.
- The Z87 chipset. Yes, you have arrived at the top of the league, the one with the most features, SATA ports, USB ports... but probably for some people most important, this chipset is the only chipset that allows you to overclock your processor.
So, if you are buying a core i5-4570K and stick it in a H87 chipset board, it doesn't make sense as you can't over clock it anyway and you should have gone for the normal one, not the K one, unless you plan on replacing the mainboard... but that, in general is mostly a bad idea.
Memory / RAM
At the moment there is quite some issues going on and there are threads that speak of 'best RAM is this' or that. There may be some truth in that, but it doesn't mean you always HAVE to buy new memory. It all depends on what you want to get from the machine. If you tickle it and want the power house, you obviously are not going to stick in DDR3 1066 MHz (PC8500 or 8x1066). Intel still recommends DDR3 1600MHz PC12800 RAM, but some motherboard manufacturer thinks the 1866MHz is the golden number. I think time will tell, and certainly for those overclocking, get the fastest you can get.
For those with lesser demands, stick with Intel's recommendation or the mainboard's list of acceptable RAM. This often ranges from 1066 to 1600MHz RAM.
In general to get a double data rate, you get PAIRS of RAM, not single sticks, but they do work too.
The chipset also limits you with the maximum allowed RAM you can put in. H87 and Z87 allow 32GB which is pretty good. When Mavericks boots it uses around 3GB of memory, so take at least 4GB as the minimum, 8 is better. 16 and higher for video and photo editing.
Power supplies, sleep, and new Haswell features
For most of us this slipped our attention I would say. Only system builders would have seen this probably.
Haswell has some new and lower power consumption states, the so called C states (aha now you know what those are for).
We now have C6, C7 and C8 state. In C8 the power consumption is down to around 0.05A. This is a problem.
The problem is that older power supplies often shut down completely when the power consumption is dropped to that low a number. So... if you ever want to have a chance of getting sleep etc to work, you would at least need a Haswell certified power supply...
Or you disable (if the BIOS allows it) these power states. The BIOS names for these options differ, MSI calls it x, Asus calls it y Gigabyte calls it z. See your documentation.
This is not a well known issue with Haswell. But of you ever want to stand a fighting chance to get sleep fully working, you either set the BIOS parameters right so you can use your old power supply, or you get one that fulfills Haswell's requirements.
Then there is a USB bug, in the C1 stepping of the intel chipsets. According to Intel it was not causing any data loss. If a machine was woken from the standby or sleep mode, and a USB 3 stick had been inserted before that, the stick would not be recognized after the wake. There was a recall around August 2013. Some manufacturers put a "C2" sticker on the motherboard boxes to show the chipset was not affected by the bug.
Well, this concludes my writeup for all the newbies, noobs, and even the die-hard DIY Hackintosher. Enjoy!
I would say that most people who build Hackintoshes or PCs for that matter, thought that the 4th generation "Intel core i" processors were just merely somewhat faster, more economical in power consumption, and so the best choice.
Yes, so you would think. Don't get me wrong, 5% increase over Ivy Bridge: well done. More economical power consumption, more sleeping states.... yeah well.... let me get back to that in a bit. Keep reading.
In general a lot of buying advice is about motherboards, CPUs or RAM sometimes, but what I think, a lot of people forget or do not realize, is that Haswell makes extra demands.
I'm not here to advise you on which motherboard you should buy. But there is general advice about processors, and power supplies.
If we look at the current line up of Intel core i processors, the lines are mostly clearly drawn.
- Core i3-4xxx are dual core or two core processors.
- Core i5-4xxx are quad core, quad thread processors.
- Core i7-4xxx are quad core, 8 thread processors.
There are exceptions obviously. But in general this is what the line up looks like.
Let's start with a general typecast of these processors.
Core i3: general office use, light computer use. Internet, a movie. For this, it is more than enough. GeekBench score around 6000.
Core i5: With this you can do picture and photo editing with sufficient power. GB scores around 9500.
Core i7: The power houses, for those who really need it. GB scores around 15000.
I show the GeekBench scores to give you a rough idea on how much power there is in the 2 or 4 core machines. So this should give you a good direction of what you should look at.
After the processor's name, there can be a suffix. For instance, the core i5-4570S. The suffix values have different meanings.
- the processors with a K suffix are unlocked, meaning you can overclock them to higher ratios then what their brethren without the K can do. It means though that when these processors are overclocked, their life span is shorter. Heat is what normally kills some electrical component and when you overclock something that is supposed to run on 3.5GHz to 4.2 or even 4.5GHz, and only get there by pumping more volts in it... well you can see where it leads: more power, more heat...
- processors with a S suffix are reduced power consumption chips. Intel likes to call it optimized
but fact is that if you compare a (typical) power consumption of the S processors of 65W against the normal 84W or more... you can simply said do with a smaller cooler, a smaller case. (I'm running the core i5-4570s in what I think is one of the smallest cases (12"x11"x2") and it is fine in there.)- then we have some oddity, the T variant. In core i5 you can get these T processors, but they have even more reduced power consumption (and obviously also less GeekBench score). In this case the i5 processors do not have 4 but 2 cores. The power is reduced to a mere 35W.
There are also differences in the same processors (i.e. core i5-4570, core i5-4570S and 4570K) with respect to normal operating frequency, turbo boost, hyperthreading and what have you not.
You will see 'boxed' and 'tray' versions of these processors. I prefer boxed versions, for a few reasons. They are normally just a few dollars more, but give you a proven fan that is designed to deal with the heat, and you get a better warranty.
Integrated graphics
Only you can decide at some point whether the integrated graphics on a processor is enough for you or not. A heavy gamer, or video editor will certainly drop in one or two good graphics cards.
Haswell incorporates (mostly) the HD4600 IGP integrated graphics processor. Only HD4600 is currently supported in Mavericks and I think HD5000 too.
The HD4000 Ivy Bridge IGP is outpaced by the HD4600 by 30% more power. The HD5000 brings even more. If you are not sure the IGP gives you enough power, then leave open a possibility to upgrade your system with a discrete card later.
Motherboards
Next we need to put the CPU in a socket on a motherboard. Intel decided that we didn't have enough choices in chipsets so for Haswell we can now choose from 6 different variations of it. You recognize the chipset often on the board name like GA-Z87M-UD5H or something. The Z87 is the chipset.
The first character is the chipset type (i.e. Z), the second (8) the Intel chipset series.
- The B85 and Q85 chipset type are actually more geared towards office use where special BIOS settings can allow the PC to be remote controlled and maintained. It's also called vPro. Just so you know. There are plenty of builds with for instance the B85 chipset type. But I am not sure Apple would use them.
- The H87 chipset often is used in home PCs or Hackintoshes, and offer a lot of features in terms of number of SATA ports, USB ports etc. However, H81 chipset is used in mostly very small (ITX size) boards, and have a very limited amount of expansion possibilities, SATA ports and USB ports. For their purpose they are normally fine though and don't need more than these.
- The Z87 chipset. Yes, you have arrived at the top of the league, the one with the most features, SATA ports, USB ports... but probably for some people most important, this chipset is the only chipset that allows you to overclock your processor.
So, if you are buying a core i5-4570K and stick it in a H87 chipset board, it doesn't make sense as you can't over clock it anyway and you should have gone for the normal one, not the K one, unless you plan on replacing the mainboard... but that, in general is mostly a bad idea.
Memory / RAM
At the moment there is quite some issues going on and there are threads that speak of 'best RAM is this' or that. There may be some truth in that, but it doesn't mean you always HAVE to buy new memory. It all depends on what you want to get from the machine. If you tickle it and want the power house, you obviously are not going to stick in DDR3 1066 MHz (PC8500 or 8x1066). Intel still recommends DDR3 1600MHz PC12800 RAM, but some motherboard manufacturer thinks the 1866MHz is the golden number. I think time will tell, and certainly for those overclocking, get the fastest you can get.
For those with lesser demands, stick with Intel's recommendation or the mainboard's list of acceptable RAM. This often ranges from 1066 to 1600MHz RAM.
In general to get a double data rate, you get PAIRS of RAM, not single sticks, but they do work too.
The chipset also limits you with the maximum allowed RAM you can put in. H87 and Z87 allow 32GB which is pretty good. When Mavericks boots it uses around 3GB of memory, so take at least 4GB as the minimum, 8 is better. 16 and higher for video and photo editing.
Power supplies, sleep, and new Haswell features
For most of us this slipped our attention I would say. Only system builders would have seen this probably.
Haswell has some new and lower power consumption states, the so called C states (aha now you know what those are for).
We now have C6, C7 and C8 state. In C8 the power consumption is down to around 0.05A. This is a problem.
The problem is that older power supplies often shut down completely when the power consumption is dropped to that low a number. So... if you ever want to have a chance of getting sleep etc to work, you would at least need a Haswell certified power supply...
Or you disable (if the BIOS allows it) these power states. The BIOS names for these options differ, MSI calls it x, Asus calls it y Gigabyte calls it z. See your documentation.
This is not a well known issue with Haswell. But of you ever want to stand a fighting chance to get sleep fully working, you either set the BIOS parameters right so you can use your old power supply, or you get one that fulfills Haswell's requirements.
Then there is a USB bug, in the C1 stepping of the intel chipsets. According to Intel it was not causing any data loss. If a machine was woken from the standby or sleep mode, and a USB 3 stick had been inserted before that, the stick would not be recognized after the wake. There was a recall around August 2013. Some manufacturers put a "C2" sticker on the motherboard boxes to show the chipset was not affected by the bug.
Well, this concludes my writeup for all the newbies, noobs, and even the die-hard DIY Hackintosher. Enjoy!
