hwinfo cpu package power reddit

What’s your rig’s CPU package minimum power consumption on HWInfo (when idle)? What processor are you using?

reddit.com › r › sffpc › comments › 1o9n561 › whats_your_rigs_cpu_package_minimum_power

Idle power consumption is a really big topic, and it's easy to make a mistake that costs you a lot of power. Some notes from my own looking into this: * It seems that chiplet based CPUs have higher idle than monolithic ones. I don't completely know why but I guess chiplets have to keep the inter-chip links active. Both Intel and AMD now have chiplet and monolithic CPUs in their ranges. * Do consider overall power not just idle. For example, Intel CPUs up to 14th gen have very low idle, but 13th and 14th were notoriously power hungry under load compared to AMD. Unless your machine is idle almost all of the time the overall power might be higher even if the idle time power was lower. Intels Core Ultra chips are better for load power efficiency, but are chiplet based so have higher idle again. It very much depends on your use case, is this a server, NAS, or gaming machine etc. * Very low CPU power is achieved by putting the CPU into higher C states - basically turning off and putting to sleep various bits of the CPU. Many things can prevent this happening. Some hardware will refuse to go to sleep properly and keep the CPU awake along with it (this might be a legacy issue, though I think some NICs are still culprits here). * Similarly, a lot of low idle power discussion is focussed on Linux based servers, where idle really is idle. Windows has a habit of pissing about in the background which will prevent the CPU from reaching properly low idle power. * Think about your power supply. The standard rating systems don't measure them down at 20w-40w or so, and even within the same rating there can be a lot of variation there. At 30w system idle power, a PSU at 85% efficiency will be adding 5w. A different PSU that only achieves 60% efficiency that low will be adding 20w. Both of these PSUs could be gold rated as that's measured at higher power. * Wolfgangs channel on Youtube is a very good resource for idle power discussions. He focusses on servers, but it would apply to any hardware. He also has a spreadsheet of power supply idle efficiencies, and has build videos using both AMD and Intel devices for low power. Answer from FredFarms on reddit.com

reddit.com › r/techsupport › what does the "cpu package power" value tell me?

r/techsupport on Reddit: What does the "CPU Package Power" value tell me?

May 12, 2024 -

Title. Apparently I have close to 140W. Is that the power the CPU is drawing or is it something else?

Top answer

1 of 1

2

if you're in HWiNFO, hover over it, there's a tooltip that explains it in detail. CPU Package Power Power consumed by the entire CPU package. A sum of powers consumed by all rails measured via telemetry (i.e. VDDCR_CPU, VDDCR_SOC, VDDIO_MEM) plus other rails estimated (i.e. Rest-Of-Chip).

reddit.com › r/amd › how accurate is hwinfo? can i just add cpu package power and gpu watts to get a rough estimate of power consumption?

r/Amd on Reddit: How accurate is HWINFO? Can I just add CPU package power and GPU watts to get a rough estimate of power consumption?

May 29, 2017 -

Want to know how much my total Ryzen 1600 and RX 580 uses but dont really have anything aside from HWinfo Don't want to buy a killawatt to be sure. Just want an estimate

Top answer

1 of 3

2

I can't speak to HWINFO's accuracy, but adding the processor and video card and motherboard consumption will generally give you a good idea of how large a power supply you will need. Other components will obviously require further power, but these three tend to account for 90%+ in a typical build, unless you have a massive number of HDs, fully buffered ram, or some high power consumption PCI cards, etc. If you want further assurance you can check your build against something like PCPartPicker.com. Though note that a lot of these places use the CPU's listed TDP, which is not always a good idea. AMD tends to do okay in this area (though I don't know about the Ryzens) but the TDP listed for Intel parts is often much lower than what the CPU will draw when maxed out. Either way, this should be accounted for in the heardroom you give yourself when selecting a power supply. If you plan to overclock you will certainly be looking at higher power consumption. The Ryzen 1600 and the RX 580 will put you at about 250W. Not sure what motherboard you are looking at, and what you plan to put in there besides, but I would be very surprised if you ended up with a system that couldn't run happily on a 400W supply, which seem to be about where the respectable brands start, though the 450Ws don't seem to cost hardly any more. Whether you want to get a larger supply so that you can add a beefier processor (AM4 is a new socket, so you might want to keep this motherboard through a couple CPU upgrades) or upgrade to a higher consumption GPU in future (or dual GPUs) is up to you. A larger supply would also run a bit cooler, which means possibly less fan noise, and certainly longer life.

2 of 3

1

It all depends how many power measuring sensors your system has. For example my system is pulling 230w from the wall at the moment but in HWinfo CPU package and GPU chip combined are only 120w. And I don't have much else in terms of power consumption to go on.

Videos

04:48

YouTube

HwINFO | CPU Performance Check - YouTube

October 4, 2025

03:17

YouTube

Arrow Lake HWiNFO64 "Power Limit Exceeded" Fix - YouTube

May 22, 2025

10:57

YouTube

Mastering Your PC: How to Use HWINFO for Detailed Hardware Info ...

How to check CPU temperatures - HWiNFO - YouTube

September 7, 2020

5.03K

View all

reddit.com › r/sffpc › what’s your rig’s cpu package minimum power consumption on hwinfo (when idle)? what processor are you using?

r/sffpc on Reddit: What’s your rig’s CPU package minimum power consumption on HWInfo (when idle)? What processor are you using?

October 18, 2025 -

Just got a FormD T1 and studying whether to put in an Intel or AMD. Checking reviews and comments in forums, AMD is known for high idle power consumption. Sounds really inefficient to me, finding it hard to accept this by principle and leaning towards Intel. What’s the lowest idle power consumption a modern AMD CPU can achieve? And through what means (BIOS, Windows config, etc.)?

Top answer

1 of 13

9

It’s an odd thing to base your purchase on. Have you done the math on how much it would cost per hour of use for electricity between each CPU? Do you leave your computer on all of the time? What about power draw when you are actually using it? An AMD chip could be more efficient during use. To each their own though.

2 of 13

7

Idle power consumption is a really big topic, and it's easy to make a mistake that costs you a lot of power. Some notes from my own looking into this: * It seems that chiplet based CPUs have higher idle than monolithic ones. I don't completely know why but I guess chiplets have to keep the inter-chip links active. Both Intel and AMD now have chiplet and monolithic CPUs in their ranges. * Do consider overall power not just idle. For example, Intel CPUs up to 14th gen have very low idle, but 13th and 14th were notoriously power hungry under load compared to AMD. Unless your machine is idle almost all of the time the overall power might be higher even if the idle time power was lower. Intels Core Ultra chips are better for load power efficiency, but are chiplet based so have higher idle again. It very much depends on your use case, is this a server, NAS, or gaming machine etc. * Very low CPU power is achieved by putting the CPU into higher C states - basically turning off and putting to sleep various bits of the CPU. Many things can prevent this happening. Some hardware will refuse to go to sleep properly and keep the CPU awake along with it (this might be a legacy issue, though I think some NICs are still culprits here). * Similarly, a lot of low idle power discussion is focussed on Linux based servers, where idle really is idle. Windows has a habit of pissing about in the background which will prevent the CPU from reaching properly low idle power. * Think about your power supply. The standard rating systems don't measure them down at 20w-40w or so, and even within the same rating there can be a lot of variation there. At 30w system idle power, a PSU at 85% efficiency will be adding 5w. A different PSU that only achieves 60% efficiency that low will be adding 20w. Both of these PSUs could be gold rated as that's measured at higher power. * Wolfgangs channel on Youtube is a very good resource for idle power discussions. He focusses on servers, but it would apply to any hardware. He also has a spreadsheet of power supply idle efficiencies, and has build videos using both AMD and Intel devices for low power.

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

Calculating Power Draw with HWInfo Confusion? | HWiNFO® Forum

June 16, 2023 - As for the CPU, the "CPU Package Power" should be the total power consumed by the CPU and you should not not sum that up with other CPU power values as they cover only certain sub-parts that are already included in the total/package value. There are multiple rails driven to the CPU and only ...

reddit.com › r/gaminglaptops › my ryzen cpu tdp is 45 watts. how is hwinfo reporting a cpu package power of 155 watts in game if the tdp is 45?

r/GamingLaptops on Reddit: My Ryzen CPU TDP is 45 watts. How is HWinfo reporting a CPU package power of 155 watts in game if the TDP is 45?

March 3, 2022 -

Title says it all

Top answer

1 of 3

4

I think that's normal. 45 watts is the long term power usage, also known as PL1. However the CPU is allowed to temporarily use a lot more power for a short amount of time (usually 28 seconds), this is called PL2. For example my i7-8750H usually sits at 45 watts in gaming and upto 78 in benchmarks. Because newer CPUs have more cores and higher frequencies this has slowly crept up and up. An i7-10750H uses upto 105 watts I believe. So you don't have to worry, it'll peak at 150+ watts and settle at 45 after a few minutes (or less). Edit: The reason they need the extra power is because in some workloads, 45 watts isn't enough for the CPU to keep all cores active at their designed all-core turbo ratios (frequencies). Plus, for laptops, the igpu, memory controller etc are included in the 45 watt 'budget', so the CPU simply doesn't have the power available (most of the time) to perform as best as it can

2 of 3

1

Wow that's some power. What's the battery life?

reddit.com › r/intel › what is included in the package power shown in hwinfo64?

r/intel on Reddit: What is included in the Package Power shown in HWInfo64?

May 14, 2019 -

Hey there,

I am running an Intel i7 6700K and am currently struggling to identify the main drivers of package power as shown in HWInfo64.
This CPU is powering a laptop that does not utilize the integrated graphics (discrete GPU, no Optimus, no way to output from the integrated GPU to the display).
Yet even though I am seeing an idle power consumption just below 2W for the IA cores (which I understand to be the CPU's actual cores), the idling power consumption of the package is about 13W.
Due to the CPU possessing an integrated graphics chip, I'd assume that this is idling as well or might even turn off.
The device is equipped with two DDR4 dimms of 32GB Ram in total.
But even considering this information, I am having a hard time understanding what is actually responsible for the package power.

Do you have any idea where those 11W (13W package power minus 2W for the IA cores) are going?

Thank you very much in advance.

Top answer

1 of 2

1

Very good question actually. I'm afraid I don't have answers, just another question. What kinda beast laptop runs a full-size 6700k? I take it it's not exactly focused on power efficiency? Edit: I also just checked HWiNFO64 on my desktop with a 8700k and laptop with a 8565u and on both there's a pretty large gap between package power and IA core power, so we must be missng something major here. 13W package vs 3W IA core on the 8700k at idle. 2.2W package vs 0.5W IA core on the 8565U.

2 of 2

1

https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/Thread-CPU-power-IA-vs-package-and-package-power-can-t-show-graph What is your GT power? Should be zero if the GPU is really disabled. I think package power is just the vcore times total current on the voltage regulator, so it should be everything using that voltage rail.

reddit.com › r/amd › does anyone know why ppt (or package power) is 10w higher than the sum of core power and soc power?

r/Amd on Reddit: Does anyone know why PPT (or Package power) is 10W higher than the sum of Core Power and SOC Power?

February 24, 2020 -

When checking the power draw of my Ryzen 3950X using Ryzen Master or HWInfo I've seen that PPT (or Package Power in HWInfo) is always ~10W higher than the sum of Core Power and SOC power. It doesn't matter if it's at idle or at full load.

Does anywone know why that is? What else is included in PPT apart from Core power and SOC power?

I also have a Kaby Lake CPU (laptop) and I've seen that in that case the sum of IA cores power+iGPU power+DRAM power always equals rougly Package Power. Are the package power measurements directly comparable, or is HWInfo measuring different things in the different CPUs?

Top answer

1 of 10

4

Same thing here. There's around 10-15W that's unaccounted for. PPT is socket power, so my guess is the accounted wattage is Infinity fabric power use

2 of 10

4

Could be power losses throughout the chip.

reddit.com › r/overclocking › hwinfo64-need help finding the correct cpu power/energy consumptio

r/overclocking on Reddit: HWINFO64-Need help finding the correct CPU power/energy consumptio

July 24, 2024 - However i've read that it increases power consumption because all cores are awake and fully working. I tried using HWINFO64's sensor mode and checked the "CPU Package Power" section.

Find elsewhere

Google Bing Mojeek

reddit.com › r/xmg_gg › psa: latest hwinfo64 7.00 increases power consumption in idle. upgrade to 7.01 beta!

r/XMG_gg on Reddit: PSA: Latest HWiNFO64 7.00 increases power consumption in Idle. Upgrade to 7.01 Beta!

March 18, 2021 -

Hi everyone,

HWiNFO64 7.00 was released on March 9, 2021.

Compared to previous 6.42, the new version has negative impact on CPU Power Consumption in Idle.

CPU Package Power goes up from ~1W to ~13W
CPU Package C8 Residency % goes down from ~64% to Zero

Thankfully, the latest Beta 7.01 Beta 4410 already seems to have fixed this issue.

All download links: https://www.hwinfo.com/

Comparison:

Average values after 1 minute Idle Line chart during 1 minute Idle. Logarithmic scale. C8 Residency for 7.00 not shown because it is "0" (zero) all the time.

Test configuration:

XMG FUSION 15
BIOS 0122
BIOS Setup "Load Defaults" and "Fast Boot" enabled
Windows 20H2 (Build 19042.867)
All latest drivers from Intel Driver & Support Assistant
Control Center 2.2.0.18
WiFi connected, low LCD Brightness, no peripherals except USB mouse, KB B/L off
Windows Startup cleaned up, no apps running in the background
Silent Performance Profile, running on Battery power

Potentially related:

HWINFO64 v7.00-4400 results in increased CPU utilization by the system process

Conclusion:

Don't use v7.00 for testing system power consumption in Idle
Use v6.42 or the latest 7.xx Beta

If you have any thoughts or insights on this, please share below. :-)

// Tom

P.S.: shout-out to u/Florida-Rolf who tipped me off in this post.

Top answer

1 of 4

1

Surprise surprise, this actually worked for me. Thanks a bunch, Tom!
I still can't see C8 package states (never did), but the package power is down to the usual 1.5-2W and total power draw on battery around 9-11W, depending on how many programs are running in the background.

Still can't cope with the fact that it was HWinfo's fault all along...

2 of 4

1

Thanks for the heads up! I'll monitor this and see if it makes any difference in terms of the issues I've been having with high CPU and system power usage.

See this thread and this thread where some of us in the community are experiencing similar-ish issues around C2-C3 states and high power draw / low battery life.

Seems like you're already aware of the issues though, thanks for trying to help us diagnose it!

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

CPU Package Power at very high polling rates above power limit | HWiNFO® Forum

May 5, 2023 - I also noticed that at very high polling rates the PL sensors' "Max" entry only gets clear after about 2 seconds when I hit the Clear button while idle, so maybe HWinfo is internally overloaded with these polling-rates and thus doesn't always output the PL sensor triggers in time!? You must log in or register to reply here. ... Total System Power is more than CPU Package Power,GPU ASIC Power during a load.

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

CPU Package Power: Strange results | HWiNFO® Forum

January 30, 2019 - Hey there, I started HWInfo (newest version) to see how much power my 7820x needs under full AVX load (4.2GHz incl. AVX offset) and HWInfo tells me it needs about 1.7W, what would be very nice but is obviously wrong. So I started Core Temp (newest version) and got the same results. So I...

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

Full CPU power consumption | HWiNFO® Forum

February 28, 2024 - For example: If a specific rail at some point has 1.1V and 100A, then power at that moment on that rail is 110W Volts and Ampere on a CPU are highly dynamic depending on load. ... If you mean the entire CPU package then all CPUs have multiple rails. 1 for cores, 1 for SoC and probably 1-2 more ...

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

how to read APU power consumption properly? | HWiNFO® Forum

July 27, 2022 - EDIT: okay, by now I found some older threads here on this forum, which kind of answer my question. according to here1 and here2, either CPU Package Power, or CPU PPT, or alternatively APU STAPM are enough to check the APU's total power (one of these values, not all 3 together).

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

CPU Package / CPU Core Power | HWiNFO® Forum

January 4, 2019 - The fact that CPU Core Power (SVI2 TFN) reported is so high (even higher than CPU Package Power) means, there's some glitch in the measurement. It's most probably an occasional invalid measurement during a transient state.

reddit.com › r/amd › explaining the amd ryzen "power reporting deviation" -metric in hwinfo

r/Amd on Reddit: Explaining the AMD Ryzen "Power Reporting Deviation" -metric in HWiNFO

June 17, 2020 -

The newly released v6.27-4185 Beta version of HWiNFO added support for "Power Reporting Deviation" -metric, for AM4 Ryzen CPUs. Access to this metric might become handy, when trying to find out why the CPUs might run abnormally hot on certain motherboards, or simply where the performance differences between the different motherboard might originate from.

https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/threads/explaining-the-amd-ryzen-power-reporting-deviation-metric-in-hwinfo.6456/

Update 06/17/2020: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/gz1lg8/explaining_the_amd_ryzen_power_reporting/fv5au73/

Top answer

1 of 5

59

Thanks for this write up and time put in on this research. This forum sees a handful of posts about temperature concerns some more relevant than others. I think the more tech inclined have known for some time that manufactures have used little tricks to make their boards bench higher than boards adhering to AMD/Intel stock spec. Hopefully these new metrics will help us figure out which boards/bios are running too far out of spec so users buying those boards will know what they are getting into at the very least. The Stilt's "TLDR" for those interested: "In short: Some motherboard manufacturers intentionally declare an incorrect (too small) motherboard specific reference value in AGESA. Since AM4 Ryzen CPUs rely on telemetry sourced from the motherboard VRM to determine their power consumption, declaring an incorrect reference value will affect the power consumption seen by the CPU. For instance, if the motherboard manufacturer would declare 50% of the correct value, the CPU would think it consumes half the power than it actually does. In this case, the CPU would allow itself to consume twice the power of its set power limits, even when at stock. It allows the CPU to clock higher due to the effectively lifted power limits however, it also makes the CPU to run hotter and potentially negatively affects its life-span, same ways as overclocking does. The difference compared to overclocking or using AMD PBO, is that this is done completely clandestine and that in the past, there has been no way for most of the end-users to detect it, or react to it."

2 of 5

19

Well that is interesting. That article makes clear why some companies might bias their power consumption figures for better performance, but seems to say little about why they might go in the opposite direction. With F@H running on core 4-6, it reports a deviation of ~130%, and under mostly idle loads, it seems to report around 200%, on my Gigabyte B450M-DS3H. Edit: And around 127% during a run of Cinebench R20 https://imgur.com/a/17nO2gz Edit: Seeing as The-Stilt answered my question in another comment, and that hasn't gotten much attention, here it is~ r/Amd/comments/gz1lg8/explaining_the_amd_ryzen_power_reporting/fv5au73/

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › bug reports › hwinfo® 32 or hwinfo® 64 bug reports

CPU Package Power incorrectly read | HWiNFO® Forum

January 7, 2018 - Total System Power is more than CPU Package Power,GPU ASIC Power during a load.

reddit.com › r/overclocking › how can i find out my systems total wattage used?

r/overclocking on Reddit: How can I find out my systems total wattage used?

May 19, 2024 -

Can I use hwmonitor and find out my systems total wattage being used? I would really like to know. I notice I am able to view my GPU wattage and my CPU wattage and combine the two but that doesn't take into account my monitors and fans, SSD, etc. How can I do this without a physical meter? Thanks.

Top answer

1 of 11

6

Kill a watt outlet meter.

2 of 11

4

buy a plug in watt meter, plugs into the ac, costs about 15

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › bug reports › hwinfo® 32 or hwinfo® 64 bug reports

CPU Power Package reports extremely high values even though temps are lows | HWiNFO® Forum

January 27, 2023 - Ryzen CPUs for AM4 platform rely on external, motherboard sourced telemetry to determine their power consumption. The voltage, current and power telemetry is provided to the processor by the motherboard VRM controller through the AMD SVI2 interface.

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

Normal Package Power and Power Consumption for CPU? | HWiNFO® Forum

June 4, 2023 - Total System Power is more than CPU Package Power,GPU ASIC Power during a load.

HWiNFO

hwinfo.com › home › forums › general › general discussion

CPU Wattage question | HWiNFO® Forum

September 7, 2023 - So on the tooltips of CPU Package Power and IA Cores Power, it says the usage is based on the SVID VR Telemetry which requires SVID to be enabled. However, i have SVID Control disabled in BIOS (asus z87-k + i7-4770k). Does this mean the two values i am seeing of the package and the ia cores...