Power Consumption

Power Consumption

In this segment of the article we'll slowly move into physically testing the processors and respective chipsets.
The new Sandy Bridge E based processors are a bit of a redesign alright and as a result they are quite energy needy processors with a 130W TDP. What you'll notice a lot is that in idle these things kick ass in matters of power consumption, whereas at peak TDP they behave quite normally.

In an IDLE state the PC (X79 / 3960X / 16GB memory / GeForce GTX 580 / SSD) consumes 103 Watts. Mind you that we measure the ENTIRE PC, not just the processor's power consumption.

When we place load on the CPU and we see the power draw rise, the system now consumes roughly 237 Watts. This is with merely an SSD and memory and the GTX580 installed. Your average PC will draw a little more power if you add optical drives, HDDs, soundcards etc.

I want to make it very clear that power consumption measurements will differ per PC and setup. Your attached components use power but your motherboard can also have additional ICs installed like an audio controller, LUCID chips, network controllers, extra SATA controllers, extra USB controllers, and so on. These parts all consume power, so this is an indication.

Next to that, we stress all CPU cores 100% and thus show a PEAK power consumption. Unless you transcode video with the right software your overall/average power consumption will be much lower.