Power Consumption & Noise
Power Consumption
We put the previous pages' results into one bar graph to sum them all up. It’s plain to see that the brief and sporadic peaks convey a worst-case picture of power consumption. However, you'll never see these processors try to maintain those levels. Consequently, we base our analysis on the red bars, which represent averages over prolonged periods of time.
AMD’s Ryzen 3 2200G stays below the 40W mark during everyday gaming loads. It takes a stress test to push the chip much higher. It's only then that you'll see power numbers in excess of 65W.
The Ryzen 5 2400G is more power-hungry thanks to higher clock rates, a more resource-rich GPU, and the ability to better-utilize its Zen cores through SMT technology. Still, it stays below 50W during everyday gaming loads.
Power consumption does rise sharply when we fire up the stress tests, of course. And at that point, AMD's Wraith Stealth cooler throws in the towel, resulting in throttling.
Ultimately, both of AMD’s Raven Ridge-based processors are easy to cool under normal operating conditions. There’s really no reason to suggest a better cooling solution unless you plan on overclocking, in which case you'll almost assuredly want something with more thermal capacity.
Noise
AMD’s latest processors appear almost identical when we measure the noise their bundled fans make. Both of them require a 100% duty cycle under load in order to keep up. Consequently, we're comparing acoustics at idle to the noise you'll hear in a typical gaming scenario.
With nothing else going on, the two systems run at 1588 RPM and ~32°C. There's barely any low-frequency bearing noise apparent in the spectrum analysis. The motor is responsible for readings under 1 kHz, while the rest is due to fan turbulence. At 33.7 dB(A), we'll call this solution quiet, which is to say the fan is almost inaudible in a closed PC case.
But it's not completely silent. We're blaming that on the motherboard's somewhat overzealous fan controller. Dipping down to 1200 RPM probably would have been fine, resulting in a measurement of just over 30 dB(A).
Under load, the fan runs at almost maximum speed. It doesn't matter whether you use PWM or voltage control; the motherboard only allows up to 1906 RPM. Both processors reach this, whether you're gaming or running a stress test. And as we've established, there's just not enough airflow for prolonged stress testing. To be sure, a beefier cooler would have been nice.
At this observed maximum speed, the noise level increases to 37.5 dB(A) for both gaming and stress testing.
These numbers are alright for everyday operation, but the noise is definitely noticeable. While we wouldn't call it loud, the motor sounds strained and it growls a bit more. Our frequency spectrum graph reflects this.
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