Power Consumption

Despite our overclocking temperatures on the previous page, all signs point to the new Ivy Bridge architecture as being impressively efficient on the new 22nm process technology. 

Idle power numbers stay right around 57 watts for the new Core i7-3770K though just a watt or two higher than the Sandy Bridge offerings.  This might improve with some BIOS revisions but we’re still happy with it.  Just for fun, take a look at the oldest architecture on the block – Nehalem – to see how things USED to be.  

Here is where Ivy Bridge really shines – under a full load test of Cinebench 11.5 the Core i7-3770K complete system only pulls 117.5 watts!  That is 26 watts less than the Sandy Bridge based Core i7-2600K and 106 watts less than the Sandy Bridge-E based Core i7-3960X!  Only the dual-core Core i3-2105 actually uses less power.  

The i7-3770K is the second LEAST power hungry processor but it is also the second MOST POWERFUL processor we tested so it should be no question what the performance per watt metric should look like…

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