Around the middle of 2014, Intel released a refresh of Haswell, simply titled Haswell Refresh. When compared to the original Haswell CPUs lineup, Haswell Refresh CPUs offer a modest increase in clock frequencies, usually of 100 MHz.[74] Haswell Refresh CPUs are supported by Intel's 9 Series chipsets (Z97 and H97, codenamed Wildcat Point), while motherboards with 8 Series chipsets (codenamed Lynx Point) usually require a BIOS update to support Haswell Refresh CPUs.[75]
The CPUs codenamed Devil's Canyon, covering the i5 and i7 K-series SKUs, employ a new and improved thermal interface material (TIM) called next-generation polymer thermal interface material (NGPTIM). This improved TIM reduces the CPU's operating temperatures and improves the overclocking potential, as something that had been problematic since the introduction of Ivy Bridge.[76] Other changes for the Devil's Canyon CPUs include a TDP increase to 88 W, additional decoupling capacitors to help smooth out the outputs from the fully integrated voltage regulator (FIVR), and support for the VT-d that was previously limited to non-K-series SKUs.[77] TSX was another feature brought over from the non-K-series SKUs, until August 2014 when a microcode update disabled TSX due to a bug that was discovered in its implementation.
