Power Consumption
We disable all power-saving technology for the performance tests in order to give us a consistent set of results, and to give us 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, we re-enable everything for the power consumption tests 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 represent the
total system power draw from the mains, rather than the power consumption of a CPU itself. Measuring the power draw of any individual component in a PC is tricky to impossible to achieve.
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.
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Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
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Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
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Intel Core i7-2600K (3.4GHz)
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Intel Core i5-2400 (up to 3.99GHz)
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Intel Core i3-2100 (3.1GHz)
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Intel Core i5-2500K (4.9GHz)
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Intel Core i7-2600K (4.85GHz)
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Intel Core i5-760 (2.8GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (3.3GHz)
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Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition (3.46GHz)
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Intel Core i7-950 (3.06GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition (3.7GHz)
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Intel Core i5-760 (4.1GHz)
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Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3.33GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (4.2GHz)
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Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition (4.6GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition (4.3GHz)
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Intel Core i7-950 (4.3GHz)
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Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (4.4GHz)
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75
-
76
-
77
-
77
-
78
-
80
-
81
-
93
-
108
-
109
-
117
-
119
-
124
-
140
-
146
-
157
-
167
-
174
-
177
Watts, lower is better
Load Power Consumption
For this test, we want to only stress the CPU, so we 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.
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Intel Core i3-2100 (3.1GHz)
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Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
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Intel Core i5-760 (2.8GHz)
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Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
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Intel Core i5-2400 (up to 3.99GHz)
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Intel Core i7-2600K (3.4GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition (3.7GHz)
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Intel Core i5-760 (4.1GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (3.3GHz)
-
Intel Core i5-2500K (4.9GHz)
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Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition (3.46GHz)
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Intel Core i7-950 (3.06GHz)
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Intel Core i7-2600K (4.85GHz)
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Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (3.33GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition (4.3GHz)
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Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition (4.6GHz)
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Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (4.4GHz)
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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (4.2GHz)
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Intel Core i7-950 (4.3GHz)
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115
-
142
-
146
-
148
-
154
-
156
-
195
-
198
-
207
-
221
-
231
-
233
-
234
-
256
-
331
-
356
-
368
-
369
-
383
Watts, lower is better
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.
Read our
Performance Analysis
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