Power difference

Hardware Build a PC
1

Just wanted to put this out there for informational purposes.  For those of you who are considdering upgrading from an x58 platform up to Haswell, here's a tidbit for what you can expect in power consumption difference from the wall.

I have a Kill-A-Watt meter which I used to measure my old system.  With an EVGA X58 FTW3 board, i7-950, and gtx 580, I pullged 150W from the wall IDLE.  Just last week I upgraded my computer with new board, proc, and RAM.  I kept the GTX580 which I blame for the majority of power consumption, but I saw a dramatic drop with the Haswell upgrade.  With a Gigabyte z87-UD3H board, i7-4770, and the GTX580, I'm now pulling 90W from the wall IDLE.  

Lower power consumption was high on my list for reasons to upgrade (lower heat output too).  I'm sure my system's idle power consumption would be alot lower than 90w if I had a newer graphics card.  That 580 sure is a beast.

2

Yeh you're right by getting a newer card it would use a lot less power. The only good thing i see out of haswell is that low power consumption. I mean 90w thats increadible. i think mine is pulling maybe 100+ idle.

3

I'm really happy with the 40% decrease in idle power consumption.  But it's not just power consumption that's great about Haswell - the performance is fantastic too.  Looking at some monitoring software, I can see my new chip has alot less activity when doing the same tasks my 950 did.  I don't have any numbers, but i was playing Crysis 3 yesterday and I noticed that the 4770 was working alot less harder than the old 950 haha.