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by misja 2397 days ago
280W TDP?! That's more than what a large refrigerator uses ..
3 comments

>That's more than what a large refrigerator uses ..

That's partially due to good insulation in modern fridges. After all, if the insulation is perfect, you could run a fridge on 0W (assuming you don't open the doors).

Then it's clear what must be done in the CPU world -- we need to insulate our CPUs better and eliminate all heat transfer.
How's that? By powering them with Maxwell's Demon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon

Watts are joules/second - with perfect insulation and doors not opening, the only energy used is the energy used to cool the contents initially. As time approaches infinity watts approach zero, despite the energy consumed initially. c/t -> 0 as t->INF given constant c.
reminds me of how things were back in the days of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition!

EDIT: Wow, the TDP of that was only 115 watts[0]. I remember thinking it was just a monstrous power-sucker of a CPU.

0: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27492/p...

TDP does not reflect actual power draw. Actual power draw might be more, might be less. Either way, its like, eight normal computers.
Expect max around 430W...
Anandtech's testing showed full load power consumption of 279.82 W (3960X) and 286.72 W (3970X). OTOH the "255W" Xeon W-3175X full load power consumption was 381.08W...
2990WX with PBO enabled went over 400W.
Overclocking chips does tend to cause power usage to spike, yes. That's not exactly a new thing, nor is the increase that surprising. A slight bump to voltage will cause power consumption to skyrocket. Heck, i9-7980XE's at 4.9ghz are pushing 1kW in consumption. Hence why intel's 28 core @ 5ghz demo used a 1700W capable cooler.
Goodness, I had no idea the power consumption of that Xeon was so high!
ah no Amd power numbers are usually on the money
How will they manage to package twice the cores at the same TDP? (3990X vs. 3970X, both apparently rated at 280W).
The power consumption of an individual core can vary greatly depending on its clock speed (and voltage, which can be reduced when running at a lower clock speed). Putting 64 cores into the same TDP as their 32-core chip is actually pretty easy. If you actively use all 64 cores, they'll be running at a lower clock speed than if you were only using 32 cores.
binning the Chiplets helps them a ton with this