Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge Processor Review

Name: Intel Core i7-3770K Processor
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, April 23, 2012, 12:01 PM EDT

Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we also 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.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

Power consumption with the Ivy Bridge-based Core i7-3770K is nothing short of excellent. When using the processor's integrated graphics, our test system consumed only 43 watts at idle and 102 watts under load--by far the lowest of the bunch. With a discrete GPU installed, the Core i7-3770K-based system was once again the lowest of the group, coming in below the Core i7-2700K by a few watts under both idle and load conditions.

We also monitored power consumption with our Ivy Bridge based test system while overclocking. In its stock configuration (with a discrete GPU installed), the Core i7-3770K-based system pulled 159 watts from the outlet under load. While overclocked to roughly 4.6GHz with a core voltage of 1.295 volts, power consumption only jumped to 200 watts. That's a sizable increases for sure, but nothing like the huge jumps we saw with Sandy Bridge-E.

Tags: Intel, CPU, processor, corei7, 22nm, Ivy-Bridge, 3770K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com