Power Consumption

For all of the performance tests, we disable all power-saving technology in order to give us a consistent set of results, and also best-case performance numbers - even though technologies such as Intel's SpeedStep might only take microseconds to kick in, that can make a difference in some tests.

However, for the power consumption tests we re-enable everything in order to get a real-world power draw. The power draw is measured via a power meter at the wall, so the numbers below are of total system power draw from the mains, not the power consumption of a CPU itself. Measuring the power draw of any individual component in a PC is tricky to impossible to acheive.

Idle Power Consumption

For this test, we leave the PC doing nothing but displaying the Windows 7 desktop (with Aero enabled) for a few minutes and record the wattage drawn from the wall via a power meter.

Power Consumption (Idle)

Peak system power draw from the wall, Windows 7 Desktop, with Aero enabled)

  • Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-2600K (3.4GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-2400 (up to 3.99GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-2500K (4.9GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-2600K (4.85GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-760 (2.8GHz)
  • AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (3.3GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-950 (3.06GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-760 (4.1GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3.33GHz)
  • AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (4.2GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-950 (4.3GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (4.4GHz)
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 77
  • 80
  • 81
  • 93
  • 108
  • 117
  • 124
  • 140
  • 146
  • 174
  • 177
0
50
100
150
200
Watts, lower is better

Load Power Consumption

For this test, we want to only stress the CPU, so use the smallfft stress test of Prime95 to fully load all available processors (logical as well as physical). We leave Aero enabled, and wait a few minutes for any power saving technology to kick in and for the power consumption to level out before taking our reading.

Power Consumption (Load)

Peak system power draw from the wall, Prime95 smallfft test

  • Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-760 (2.8GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-2400 (up to 3.99GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-2600K (3.4GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-760 (4.1GHz)
  • AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (3.3GHz)
  • Intel Core i5-2500K (4.9GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-950 (3.06GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-2600K (4.85GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3.33GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (4.4GHz)
  • AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (4.2GHz)
  • Intel Core i7-950 (4.3GHz)
  • 142
  • 146
  • 148
  • 154
  • 156
  • 198
  • 207
  • 221
  • 233
  • 234
  • 256
  • 368
  • 369
  • 383
0
100
200
300
400
Watts, lower is better

Read our performance analysis of the Core i5-2400, Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K separately.

Note: the Intel LGA1156 CPUs were tested in a micro-ATX board. This difference can account for up to 20W, as we found in our Energy Efficient Hardware feature.
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