[velox_io]

The efficiency at load is great, the power usage at idle could use some improvement (I feel there's a missing update). My previous system (6700k boasting to 4.6ghz) used about 50 watts at idle (from the wall). After I switched motherboard and CPU (a 3950x, the rest is the same, plus new Windows install) the power usage at idle is ~90 watts. The power management is too eager to use all the cores, I'm pretty sure their would be zero decernable difference if they shutdown one of the CCDs (chiplets) when utilisation is low. I've played around with the power settings and ~90w is about the best it gets.

Under load the system is brilliant (it's 4x faster with the same power usage, makes using my laptop painfully slow in comparison). The power management on these CPUs is incredibly advanced (each core runs at different speeds & voltages), I'm just surprised that it doesn't do better at idle.

[blattimwind]

The 3900X and 3950X sadly still have issues with idle power, the lower end chips do much better. A 3400G for example self-reports less than 10 W at idle, entire system is around 20 W out of the power socket. The uncore of my 3900X consumes more than that in idle according to itself...

The usual desktop (3500-3800 series) chips perform similarly well, it's just the two-chiplet AM4 processors that have been somewhat plagued by problems like this.

[mrguyorama]

I was running into issues where just having Steam open, not doing anything at all, caused a R5 3600 to go from 2 watts, to 13 watts power usage. Start closing background processes. There might be one doing weird stuff keeping cores awake