AMD Ryzen 9 7950X review - Power Consumption and temperatures

Power Consumption

We show energy consumption based on the entire PC (motherboard / processor / graphics card / memory / SSD). This number depends and will vary per motherboard (added ICs / controllers / wifi / Bluetooth) and PSU (efficiency). Keep in mind that we measure the ENTIRE PC, not just the processor's power consumption. Your average PC can differ from our numbers if you add optical drives, HDDs, soundcards etc.  Also do not rule out anything RGB these days, an RGB lit motherboard, Keyboard, Liquid cooler, and mouse these days can easily add 10 to 15 Watts of power consumption to that Wattage budget. 

We 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, 3rd party chips, network controllers, extra SATA controllers, extra USB controllers, and so on. These parts all consume power, so these results are a subjective indication. Next to that, we stress all CPU cores 100% and thus show peak power consumption. Unless you transcode video with the right software your average power consumption will be much lower.

Temperatures

We don't compare temperature data since we'd have to apply identical cooling to all platforms over and over. Furthermore, coolers (RPM) respond differently to TDP and variables set in your motherboard BIOS. As a result, we simply do a temperature stress test. We utilize a 240mm LCS cooler (Corsair H100i RGB Elite (2022), and the processor operates at 90C under all-core stress. This is at maximum Wattage settings on the processor.

LCS for the 7950X will be mandatory. AMD has set a margin running towards 95 Degrees C before throttling occurs. Nothing bad will happen at these temps with the processor. However, the sheer fact that A Corsair H100i RGB Elite (2022) 240mm LCS cooling shows this as a result, and doesn't sit well with us. HWInfo reveals that the package power measured reaches 216W.