Power Consumption and temperatures

Power Consumption and temperatures

The Core i7 processors have gotten a bit of a redesign and are relatively energy friendly processors, well... as long as you do not overclock them that is. Next to that, clever power management allows the internal voltages and processor multiplier to drop, core independent.

All Nehalem LGA1366 quad-core based processors have a TDP of 120W. The power consumption of these entire pro setups is high though.

• System in IDLE = 153 Watts
• Processor under full load = 263 Watts
• Processor overclocked at 4.2 GHz / 1.45V under full load pulls 459 Watts (!)

Power consumption is okay'ish but definitely on the high side. Once we overclock to 4.2 GHz on all cores (we'll show you that in the next chapter) things get out of hand much quicker. For the best power consumption make sure you have BIOS features like EIST and C1E enabled and within Windows set your performance mode to balanced (allows the processor to clock down).

Processor Temperatures

Let's have a look at processor temperatures.

Temperatures are very good and under control. With an air cooler you can expect temps like these:

idle

100% CPU load

ASUS R3 BE

30

41

Now before you say 'awesomeness on the temps duuuud,' this test was conducted with a heavy weight Noctua NH D14 heatpipe cooler, this is the best heatpipe cooling your money can get you at this very moment...

Of course results will vary with different motherboards and cooling solutions. 100% CPU load boils down to 4 cores / 8 threads 100% stressed with Prime 95, voltages are left at default, processor Turbo mode is enabled.

Overclocked temps of course will differ, but we'll show you that in a second. Overall these are normal values.