Power Consumption
We didn’t use a high-efficiency power supply, nor did we bother to optimize anything. Yet, the DH55TC/Core i5-661 system delivered very impressive results. Idle power at 30W was as low as we could go with a Core 2 Duo E7200, a G31 motherboard, and a high efficiency power supply around one year ago. Now, we’re hitting this low idle power level just with regular components. A high-efficiency power supply, energy-efficient hard drive, and some voltage modding could easily bring a similar system to roughly 25W idle power. The amazing part is that it would still beat any Core 2 Duo system.
The difference at peak power is not as large as at idle. Still, given that the new Core i5 dual-core system delivers significantly better performance, the drop from 92W to 83W represents a roughly 10% reduction.
The Athlon II X2 240e’s 45W TDP is a huge advantage here, greatly narrowing power consumption gap against the Core 2 Duo machine. However, the Phenom II X2 still requires much more power. The difference is at least as large as the Core i5 661’s idle power requirement.