Intel Core i9 7900X processor review - Power Consumption

Power Consumption

In an IDLE state, a PC (motherboard (X299) / processor / memory / SSD) consumes roughly 75 Watts. 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. 

The Intel X299 / Skylake-X series can do two things. Stay in line at advertised power consumption, but here your game performance will drop massively. Or Disable hardware P-States and get normal proper performance throughout the book. MSI opted the last settings. But that shows in power consumption and stress heat levels.

As always 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, 3^rd 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.

 
Overall stress/load temperatures are very high with temps at the ~80 C marker. These, of course, are default results and not tweaked. The processor idles at roughly 40 Degrees C. We used a fairly dated but good Corsair H110 here for cooling. Sidenote, this was with a Beta BIOS, we do hope to see some improvements with a firmware update.