PC World - USA 2020-07)

58 PCWorld JULY 2020

REVIEWS INTEL 10TH GEN

WHAT ABOUT POWER

CONSUMPTION?

The Core i9-10900K’s power consumption has

inspired many rumors, especially considering

its official TDP of 120 watts. Intel has long been

at a disadvantage against the 7nm Ryzens on

power. Once you add two cores and more

clocks, it’s not going to get better.

For our testing, we unfortunately did

not have access to matching power

supplies. Both PCs used 1,000-watt units,

but the Ryzen 9 used an 80 Plus Silver,

while the Core i9 used an 80 Plus Gold,

which is slightly more efficient in how it

converts AC to DC. (An 80 Plus Gold must

be at least 88-percent efficient at a 20

percent load, while an 80 Plus Silver must

be 85-percent efficient.)

Both systems also featured motherboards

bedazzled with LEDs and OLEDs—we don’t

know how much power they consumed. Both

had the same liquid coolers and the same GPU

models and internal case fans, so we

monitored both using watt meters that

measured the power consumed at the wall

socket during various loads. This testing should

be taken with a high probably of inaccuracy,

though, until we can match components.

On lighter loads, you can see the purple line

(Ryzen 9) consumed more power at idle and

also on light loads. It doesn’t take long before

the Core i9 (red line) starts guzzling, though.

The Intel system actually used less power at idle and on light loads than the AMD system, but that

advantage quickly goes away.