Power Consumption
To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment.
As mentioned during the introduction, part of the advantage of Intel’s NUC is the ultra low power consumption. The Brix Pro is no exception to this with an idle draw of just over 17w and a full load draw of over 83W. What is notable is the fact that the 4770R has a TDP of 65W, this is almost 20W below the maximum consumption the recorded on our power meter. Naturally extra power will be needed for the SSD / HDD / Memory and so on, but 20W is a little higher than expected. The extra power though is consumed by the Iris Pro graphics. Although the 4770R and the Iris dies are on the same chip, the 65W TDP relates to the processor itself as opposed to the overall TDP of the package.
