Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S Processor Review

Power Consumption

Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with the power supplies, case fan, video card and hard drive model. To measure idle usage, we ran the system at idle for one hour on the desktop with no screen saver and took the measurement. For load measurements, POV-Ray 3.7 was run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load. All of the systems used identical hardware minus the motherboard and processor. It should be noted that the Core i7 processors used a Thermaltake BigWater 760i water cooler and the rest of the systems used a Corsair Nautilus 500 water cooler.

Results: When it came to power consumption the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550s used less power than the Intel Core i7 processors, which is good to see. On the down side it used more at idle and load then that AMD Phenom II processors. The most impressive number on the power consumption test has to be the load power consumption, which was just 187W!