Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 CPU Review

We'd like to cover a few final data points before bringing this article to a close. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test systems consumed using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the processors alone.

In a direct comparison to AMD's 2.66GHz quad, the Q8400 uses more juice during both idle and load states. But it did not come as a surprise that the Q9400 needed and additional 5W at idle and 9W during load.