Core i7-980X: Dialing In Efficiency With The Right Overclock

Power Consumption And OC Table

This part is amazing. Even under increased voltage, the six-core Gulftown processor remains at a total system power of roughly 85W as it idles.

Peak power depends on clock speed, but also, even more importantly, on voltage. The slight voltage increase at 4.0 GHz doesn't make much of an impact. But tweaking more aggressively at 4.13 GHz is more noticeable. System peak power scales rather linearly with clock speed, as long as you don’t increase CPU voltage.