Last Updated on October 30, 2023
Power Consumption under Light Usage
In this test, we used each machine over many days performing a variety of general desktop tasks including, but not limited, to web surfing, email, compiling source code, watching video, listening to music, and running virtualized machines.
The chart shows the power consumption of each machine. The figures are the power draw for the machine, not just the CPU.
The Intel NUC is faster than its desktop counterparts. And it’s the most frugal power consumption wise too even compared to the significantly slower i5-10400 machine. Better performance at lower running costs.
Notes about the chart:
- The tasks do not include any activities that are GPU intensive such as gaming, running locally-hosted AI apps, video recording / live streaming etc.
- While the tests access software that uses the GPU (such as Xorg), the GPU power consumption is minimal (with the exception of the i5-12400F as the machine’s dedicated graphics card draws 21W at idle).
- Two screens are used on each machine.
- The i5-12400F machine hosts a dedicated graphics card, whereas the NUC and the 10th gen machine both use onboard graphics.
- Both the i5-12400F and i5-10400 machines offer BIOS power management options. This power management is enabled. The NUC’s BIOS doesn’t offer power management functionality.
- The Balanced CPU governor is used.
Next page: Page 3 – Full CPU Load
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Page 3 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 4 – Electricity Costs
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Intel NUC 13 Pro Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Part 1 | Introduction to the series with interrogation of system |
| Part 2 | Benchmarking the Mini PC |
| Part 3 | Installing Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop |
| Part 4 | Configuring Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop |
| Part 5 | Power Consumption |
| Part 6 | P-Cores and E-Cores |
| Part 7 | Gaming |
| Part 8 | Installing and Configuring Manjaro |
| Part 9 | BIOS options |
How many watts does the NUC’s GPU take when idling?
intel_gpu_top reports that the GPU of the NUC uses 5w when idling. That’s with two screens on. There’s no difference with just one screen.
Very interesting article, thank you 🙂
Do you mean the machine is noticeably slow even for basic usage (web surfing, watching videos, email, etc.)?
For basic tasks such as email, power saver mode is fine, but web surfing is noticeably slower compared to balanced or performance, particularly on websites that are heavy with JavaScript. That’s largely because with just 1 core being stressed the frequency of a core maxes out at around 2000 MHz, whereas its 5000 MHz with performance.
Watching videos with power save is fine (including high def video encoded with AV1 (4K and 8K) providing hardware acceleration is being used). With a 4K video I just tested, the GPU draws around 9W (as opposed to 5W when idle).
Thanks for the detailed answer, that was very helpful 🙂
Have you tried to experiment with powertop to see if you can get the idle power consumption lower?
That’s something I’m planning on exploring.