Reading： CPU official TDP data is just for fun？ Teach you the true power consumption of CPU. Is the official TDP data of CPU just for fun？ Teach you to see the real power consumption of CPU
[PConline application] When many friends buy computers, they will pay attention to the power consumption of CPU. For example, if you buy a desktop, you should allocate power according to power consumption, while the power consumption of a notebook CPU is related to performance and heat generation. How to look at power consumption? Many people will refer to the official TDP data, for example, the TDP of the i7-9900K desktop is 95W, and that of the i7-10710U notebook is 15W. However, this data can’t actually reflect all the problems, and it never represents the real power consumption of CPU.
Nowadays, CPU has the function of automatic frequency adjustment, which means that its power consumption fluctuates within a certain range. For example, in the case of Turbo Boost, the power of hardware is much higher than TDP.
Intel CPU has four power gears, and TDP often only represents PL1.
Intel’s CPU is a typical example. Intel has defined four extreme power gears for SoC, which are PL1, PL2, PL3 and PL4 as shown in the figure. Among them, PL1 is the average power, and its power is closest to the TDP mark, and the CPU is allowed to keep it at this power level all the time. However, PL2 is higher than PL1, and the CPU can keep at the power of PL2 for 100 seconds, and the turbo frequency is generally in PL2 state. PL3 is a higher level, and the CPU can stay in this power level for 10 milliseconds. PL4 is the power ceiling, which is not allowed to be crossed.
It can be seen that TDP can only represent the power gear of PL1 level, and the power of CPU in actual use is much higher than this. If you calculate the power consumption according to TDP, the performance of heat dissipation and power supply under high load may deviate far from your expectations. Why does the computer suddenly restart with a black screen when rendering? Why is the notebook hotter and noisier than expected? Often, the actual power consumption of CPU is higher than your estimate, so it is meaningful to know the real power consumption of CPU. So the question is coming, what should we do?
Ordinary users don’t have a professional power consumption meter, but through some software, you can also get a general understanding of the real power consumption level of CPU. For example, this HWINFO is such a software.
HWINFO：Click here to enter official website.
In fact, HWINFO is quite famous in the player circle. It is a professional hardware monitoring software from abroad. It is free, has a green version and is very clean. Unfortunately, the software doesn’t support Chinese at present, but if it is used to monitor CPU power consumption, there is not much obstacle.
After HWINFO is opened, the hardware information that can be monitored is very rich.
When you turn on HWINFO, the software will automatically pop up the information and monitoring interface about CPU by default, and you can also view a variety of hardware information in the main interface, but these are not the focus of this article, and interested friends can experience the research slowly.
Click the "Sensors" button in the main interface to view various sensor information of this computer, including the power consumption of CPU. Find the column "CPU Package Power", which is the power consumption level of CPU.
Click the "Sensors" button.
The readings of various hardware sensors of the computer can be seen one by one.
In this column, you can see the current real-time power consumption of CPU, as well as the maximum and minimum values that have been reached. And if you use Intel CPU, you can also see the settings of PL1 and PL2.
You can see the CPU Package Power and the setting of PL1 and PL2 gears.
In this way, it is very simple to test the maximum power consumption that the CPU can achieve. You can start some high-load tasks and observe the maximum power consumption of CPU, which generally will not exceed the power consumption limit of PL2. And we know that CPU has a temperature wall in addition to the power consumption wall, so the heat dissipation can’t pass, and the power consumption of CPU can’t even reach the level of PL1. Therefore, it can be seen at a glance how much energy CPU can actually release in combination with copying software.
Generally speaking, HWINFO is really a very powerful software. But it also has a small regret, that is, the support for some CPU may not be very good — — For example, some APUs of AMD mobile platform can’t accurately display the power consumption value. After all, it is not an official software, and it can’t guarantee that all hardware readings are accurate. In addition, there is more than one software that can see CPU power consumption, but HWINFO has relatively comprehensive support for all kinds of sensors. If you also want to have a deeper understanding of hardware, you might as well try it.