killawatt owners, what's the idle power consumption of a new ryzen system?

K

Kdawg

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2017
Messages
1,116
for a basic system with just a ryzen APU, one hard drive, what is the approx power consumption during idle?

I'm wondering how big of a difference there is compared to an average newer 45w tdp laptop with the screen turned off.
 
The laptop is going to use a lot less power, at both idle and load. I can tell you that for sure.

I'd estimate the lowest you're going to get a Ryzen APU based system to idle at is in the 25-35W range, with careful component selection and a minimalist approach. Most desktop Ryzen systems idle in the 50-60W range as a minimum. I measured one of my ryzen rigs at about 70W using an ADP APU. It has a couple of fans and two SSDs in addition to an NVME drive, and of course a GPU.

The chipset on the motherboard can play a factor (x570 uses 2-3 times the power of b450 for example), as well as how many extra chips the motherboard includes. Some boards give extra USB or SATA ports beyond the basics included in the Ryzen spec, and those all add up.

The efficiency of the power supply is going to be a factor, too.

The big difference is that everything that goes into a laptop has a laser focus on saving power, whereas that's a much lesser consideration for a desktop system. So, the laptop will ultimately be much more power efficient. This is a main reason Intel is allocating their precious 10nm capacity to the mobile segment. It's where efficiency matters the most.
 
The idle power consumption will vary wildly based on the system configuration. This is true of both laptops and desktops. I've seen desktop systems idle anywhere between 94w and 124w.
 
doublejack said:
The laptop is going to use a lot less power, at both idle and load. I can tell you that for sure.

I'd estimate the lowest you're going to get a Ryzen APU based system to idle at is in the 25-35W range, with careful component selection and a minimalist approach. Most desktop Ryzen systems idle in the 50-60W range as a minimum. I measured one of my ryzen rigs at about 70W using an ADP APU. It has a couple of fans and two SSDs in addition to an NVME drive, and of course a GPU.
Click to expand...


yeah you had a gpu. that's gonna add 10-20 watts.

I can live with 25W.

I'm gonna be building my mom a barebones cheapass system, and it will be on 16 hours a day. So I'm wondering how much power consumption that will be compared to her old 45w tdp laptop.

the ryzen apus are 65w tdp, but I imagine they idle down very low voltage like a laptop eh?


Dan_D said:
The idle power consumption will vary wildly based on the system configuration. This is true of both laptops and desktops. I've seen desktop systems idle anywhere between 94w and 124w.
Click to expand...

i'm only looking for ballpark numbers for the typical cheapo system with a bronze psu
 
Kdawg said:
for a basic system with just a ryzen APU, one hard drive, what is the approx power consumption during idle?

I'm wondering how big of a difference there is compared to an average newer 45w tdp laptop with the screen turned off.
Click to expand...
I just booted up and then locked the computer, so the screen is black. Lowest I've seen on the killawat so far is just under 80 watts.

However, this is a 3950x on x570 mobo with a 1080Ti. The water pump is set to full speed and the AIO pump cooling the 1080Ti is also set to full speed. In addition, there are 9 fans, 8 of them LED. The water block and distro-plate are also full LED.
20201022_221038.jpg
Not sure how much this helps you.
 
3400G + GTX970 acting as a Minecraft server, idles around 65W or so without the screen.
 
would it be safe to say the gtx970 uses more idle power than the 3400g? ... so without the gtx970, it would probably be <30w ?
 
kamikazi said:
I just booted up and then locked the computer, so the screen is black. Lowest I've seen on the killawat so far is just under 80 watts.

However, this is a 3950x on x570 mobo with a 1080Ti. The water pump is set to full speed and the AIO pump cooling the 1080Ti is also set to full speed. In addition, there are 9 fans, 8 of them LED. The water block and distro-plate are also full LED. View attachment 291716Not sure how much this helps you.
Click to expand...


not bad. remove 8 fans and the 1080ti, and it's gotta be under 30w.

my cheapo build will only have one 12cm exhaust fan, stock cpu fan, nothing else.
 
Kdawg said:
not bad. remove 8 fans and the 1080ti, and it's gotta be under 30w.

my cheapo build will only have one 12cm exhaust fan, stock cpu fan, nothing else.
Click to expand...

Motherboard matters in these cases. The X570 chipset has a TDP of 15w by itself. That's nearly 3x what X470, B450 and B550 are rated for.
 
My R5 3600 + B450 f ROG mobo with a single 7200rpm hard drive and ATI 5770 gfx card uses a bit over 60W at idle.
Close to 90% efficient PSU, Corsair AX750, perhaps a bit lower due to the low idle power.
 
Last edited:
well, to answer my own question

i bought a killawatt and tested a new barebones ryzen 4300g desktop pc today. Just the pc tower, cpu mobo ssd. nothing else.

desktop pc sips power as good as a laptop. The 4300g behaves like the laptop chips pretty much.

Idles under 10w, and fluctuates around 7-8 watts !!!

This is identical to my ryzen 4500u laptop with the screen turned off.

IMG_20201129_212253.jpg
 
Kdawg said:
i bought a killawatt and tested a new barebones ryzen 4300g desktop pc today. Just the pc tower, cpu mobo ssd. nothing else.

desktop pc sips power as good as a laptop. The 4300g behaves like the laptop chips pretty much.

Idles under 10w, and fluctuates around 7-8 watts !!!
Click to expand...
What are the rest of the specs? Is this a prebuilt?

I find that power consumption to be ridiculously low for a "desktop". To put that idle power in perspective, STH did some testing that showed the power consumption for a stick of DDR4 is about 2W and Crucial claims the average power consumption for 8GB of DDR3 or DDR4 memory is roughly 3W. That's what makes me think this is a prebuilt that is made with lower power consumption in mind, using SODIMS.
 
My absolute worst case scenario "idles" at around 130watts according to my UPS.
Note that this is including one monitor and a network switch.
3900X, 6 hard drives, GTX 1080ti, X570 motherboard, 4 NVME drives and a very not insignificant amount of peripherals, also it never actually goes to sleep because I'm running a media server, minecraft server and torrent farm off the thing 24/7.

With the monitors off it drops to around 80 watts. Mostly from the videocard i'd guess. (Which uses 60 fucking watts on just the desktop, oh the things I do for high refresh rate monitors.)

Max power consumption, and this is me simultaneously running Cinebench and 3Dmark, an unlikely scenario, is about 550watts.
 
Last edited:
doublejack said:
What are the rest of the specs? Is this a prebuilt?

I find that power consumption to be ridiculously low for a "desktop". To put that idle power in perspective, STH did some testing that showed the power consumption for a stick of DDR4 is about 2W and Crucial claims the average power consumption for 8GB of DDR3 or DDR4 memory is roughly 3W. That's what makes me think this is a prebuilt that is made with lower power consumption in mind, using SODIMS.
Click to expand...
Also a 4300g, which...you can't buy. System builders only.

That said, it's still possible to reach ~15w with a 3400g in a standard desktop, I think, with a uATX or mITX board and no RGB, a couple fans and no dGPU.
 
My system goes down to just around 20w on the killawatt, with no applications running, windows locked and the screen off (but I didn't go around stopping background processes), balanced power plan.

It's mini ITX, 150 W power supply, a520 board, no RGB, Ryzen 4650G (imported via Aliexpress), 2x 8 GB ram @ 3600, sata ssd. I'm sure some tweaking could shave a couple more watts, but I don't think I could get it from here to 7w (nor do I really care to).
 
Nobu said:
Also a 4300g, which...you can't buy. System builders only.

That said, it's still possible to reach ~15w with a 3400g in a standard desktop, I think, with a uATX or mITX board and no RGB, a couple fans and no dGPU.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think 15-20W is about the floor for what I would consider a desktop made from off the shelf parts, and that's with very careful part selection. Getting below that requires specialized low power parts.

The x570 chip itself idles in the 7-8W range. Just throwing that out there for another point of perspective.



It is just not realistic in most situations for a desktop to idle like a laptop. It would have to be a purpose built desktop that is basically a laptop in a desktop case.
 
doublejack said:
What are the rest of the specs? Is this a prebuilt?

I find that power consumption to be ridiculously low for a "desktop". To put that idle power in perspective, STH did some testing that showed the power consumption for a stick of DDR4 is about 2W and Crucial claims the average power consumption for 8GB of DDR3 or DDR4 memory is roughly 3W. That's what makes me think this is a prebuilt that is made with lower power consumption in mind, using SODIMS.
Click to expand...


the pc is a lenovo
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/deskto.../500-series/IdeaCentre-5-14ARE05/p/90Q20001US

it has all standard desktop parts. desktop ram. 2x4gb sticks.

I unplugged the 7200rpm hdd for this power test because I am going to be running with ssd only.

in Windows power saver mode, the zen2 clocks down to 1.4ghz and sips power. HWINFO says the cpu package power was only a fraction of a watt during idle.

I couldn't believe it myself. But I did a side by side comparison of my new zen laptop and this desktop plugged into the killawatt.

During full load, this lenovo desktop would of course shoot up to like 60-70w.
But under normal internet browsing, the pc itself would only use like 15w max.

The monitor uses more power than this.



Inside is pretty standard pc...
IMG_20201202_160440.jpg
 
Last edited:
toast0 said:
My system goes down to just around 20w on the killawatt, with no applications running, windows locked and the screen off (but I didn't go around stopping background processes), balanced power plan.

It's mini ITX, 150 W power supply, a520 board, no RGB, Ryzen 4650G (imported via Aliexpress), 2x 8 GB ram @ 3600, sata ssd. I'm sure some tweaking could shave a couple more watts, but I don't think I could get it from here to 7w (nor do I really care to).
Click to expand...

the power saver plan cuts the idle power in half.

you also have more cores, so 20w looks right.
 
Kdawg said:
the pc is a lenovo
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/deskto.../500-series/IdeaCentre-5-14ARE05/p/90Q20001US

it has all standard desktop parts. desktop ram. 2x4gb sticks.

I unplugged the 7200rpm hdd for this power test because I am going to be running with ssd only.

in Windows power saver mode, the zen2 clocks down to 1.4ghz and sips power. HWINFO says the cpu package power was only a fraction of a watt during idle.

I couldn't believe it myself. But I did a side by side comparison of my new zen laptop and this desktop plugged into the killawatt.

During full load, this lenovo desktop would of course shoot up to like 60-70w.
But under normal internet browsing, the pc itself would only use like 15w max.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

I looked up the specs and I suspect part of the secret is the Pro 565 chipset. This is a system designed to be on a lot and use power efficiently. I'll bet the memory is using about a quarter of the power at idle. That's mind blowing.
 
these look like el cheapo ram sticks. They're CL22 3200's.

hard to believe they'd use much power doing nothing.
 
Kdawg said:
the power saver plan cuts the idle power in half.

you also have more cores, so 20w looks right.
Click to expand...
I tried power saver, and it only went down to 18w. The Pro 565 chipset you've got, is I think like the A300/X300 consumer chipsets; and may not be much more than a boot rom, which certainly saves some power. I'd guess your power supply may also be a bit more efficient than mine. OTOH, my cpu package power idles at 5 W in HWinfo, so that adds up.
 
Kdawg said:
these look like el cheapo ram sticks. They're CL22 3200's.

hard to believe they'd use much power doing nothing.
Click to expand...
Well, unless a computer is sleeping then RAM is never doing nothing. They constantly need to be refreshed so they don't lose the data in them and that takes electricity. The rule of thumb is a couple watts for 8GB even for slow DDR4 at stock voltage. RAM power consumption doesn't vary a lot from idle to heavy use because of how they function.
 
kamikazi said:
I just booted up and then locked the computer, so the screen is black. Lowest I've seen on the killawat so far is just under 80 watts.

However, this is a 3950x on x570 mobo with a 1080Ti. The water pump is set to full speed and the AIO pump cooling the 1080Ti is also set to full speed. In addition, there are 9 fans, 8 of them LED. The water block and distro-plate are also full LED. View attachment 291716Not sure how much this helps you.
Click to expand...

is the screen black or asleep? if it’s black it’s using just as much power as a completely white background. Slightly more actually because it takes a higher voltage to rotate the pixels so they are blocking the backlight. Note that this does not apply to OLED
 
TechnoBabble said:
is the screen black or asleep? if it’s black it’s using just as much power as a completely white background. Slightly more actually because it takes a higher voltage to rotate the pixels so they are blocking the backlight. Note that this does not apply to OLED
Click to expand...
I locked the computer and the monitor went into power save mode.
 
Numbers for comparison.

Ryzen 5 2400g
ASRock B350 Fatality ITX
2x8GB vengeance lpx 3600 (@ 3200, can’t get the board to boot with these at higher speed)
Noctua nh L9a
Wd black 256gb NVMe n a riser in the x16 slot
Wd blue 1tb ssd in m.2 slot
Hgst 1tb 2.5”

in an antec isk 110 with a pico psu and 150w power brick

I run Linux (Ubuntu 20.04). Killawatt reports 29w while Idle at login screen / locked screen.
 
My system idles @ 120-200w. Left in ultra performance mode. It's not exactly meant for lite power use.
 
My rig idles at 130-140w. Not a Ryzen, but figured I'd post my readings incase you're looking for a different rig to compare notes with.
 
It is a x470 board with 16Gb of 3200Mhz memory and only one 128Gb SSD and 2TB Seagate usb passport with 4 x 120mm cheap fans and the stock RGB cooler

3700x /RX5700 gaming power .. with the RX 5500 XT you talking a little over 100 watts for gpu .. desktop has really scaled down faster IMO

 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top