Page 14 - Power Consumption

Power Consumption

We already touched the subject a little. The QX9775 processors have a TDP (peak wattage) of 130W. Don't forget that we have four active & independent cores here per processor. Next to that we have a 10-layer pretty huge mainbiard, that's lots of wires and then we add GeForce 8800 GTX SLI to the mixture as well.

So what kind of effect do different states of the PC have on power consumption ? Well we can easily measure that to be honest.

We grab a Watt meter and measure power usage:

Let me explain what you are looking at:

• Single GTX - Idle; this is the PC in idle state, it's hardly  doing anything. The PC is equipped with in 8800 GTS graphics card.
• Gaming single GTX - here we measured the peak wattage (384 Watt) of the system with one 8800 GTX installed. Typically one or two logical CPU cores are used so we are still not fully utilizing & stressing the system.
• Eight cores 100% no GPU active; it' says it all. Here we see Prime95 stressing all eight CPU cores. The graphics card is hardly being utilized. An astounding 456 Watt is now reached.
• Max wattage Dual GTX; we inserted a second 8800 GTX and run tests in SLI mode. Typically one or two logical CPU cores are used so we are still not fully utilizing & stressing the system. We reach 600 Watt now

Since there is no game whatsoever that utilizes all eight logical cores; we are still not maximizing the most out of the PC. We estimate that you can add another 100-130 watt to final number if a game will finally be able to multi-thread the way it's supposed to be. Unfortunately that would result in a final 700-750 Watt power draw from your wall power socket. I'll leave power supply efficiency out of the equation right.

You get the generic point; this PC is not healthy for mother nature and your power bill, no Sir.