Alder Lake consumes up to 28% more energy at peak usage than Rocket Lake

The power needs for Intel's twelfth-generation Alder Lake CPUs have been revealed by China's FCPowerup, a website dedicated to power supply evaluations. This source has previously given accurate information on Nvidia's new 12-pin pcie connector, including the original schematic and pictures.

The tables appear to be from an Intel paper, most likely aimed for power supply manufacturers. It is a problem with the 12V2 rail, which delivers power to the CPU. The table contains parameters for 35, 65, 125, and 165 watts, the latter of which is only relevant to hedt processors from the tenth generation. There is no indication that Alder Lake will include high-performance desktop CPUs.

The continuous flow ratings for Comet and Rocket Lake remain unchanged. Peak values have been increased by up to 28% on the 125W models and by 15% on the 125W models. The latter refers to the peak power usage, which happens often at startup. This is critical information for power supply manufacturers because when the power supply cannot match demand, it frequently shuts down automatically.

Recently, several Alder Lake specifications and benchmarks have appeared online, as has the first purported Z690 motherboard. Now that the criteria for power supply appear to be communicated with manufacturers, all indications point to an imminent formal debut.