LAB NOTES
Running hot and heavy
Does power consumption matter?
tested. reviewed. verdictized.
INTEL’S NEW Alder Lake chips are undoubtedly a big step forward. But do they have a fatal flaw? I speak, inevitably, of power consumption. Not in a global quasi-environmental sense, that’s not my remit. What I’m talking about is the extent to which power consumption is a problem from a performance and usability perspective.
Last issue, we had the 12900K in the labs and, boy, does it like a drink. It’s a 240W-plus chip. This month, the compact 12600K is in the house and, at first glance, it’s a more efficient chip, topping out at around 150W in heavy multi-threaded workloads.
Depending on how you look at that, the 12600K seems to solve Alder Lake’s power problem.
