Intel Core i9-7980XE Extreme Edition Processor Review

Power Consumption and Temperatures

Power Consumption

If you care about your electricity bill, XE processors are not the way to go, they burn a lot of juice. Interestingly, the 7980XE uses less powered at stock than the 7900X, although that does have higher clock speeds. Overclocking was a whole new story though and the XE burns through power like it’s going out of fashion. I would normally say this is a bad thing, but looking at our benchmark figures, it’s not like that power was going to waste.

Stock

Overclocked

Temperatures

Amazingly, it’s not that hot at stock clocks. Those cores sip at the power and that’s likely why we saw lower temperatures than the 1900X. Overclock the CPU though, and that power quickly turns into heat. The CPU hit a whopping 105c, which is just 1c lower than the Threadripper, although TR does have fewer cores, so Intel is doing pretty well here. Ideally, you want this CPU under water cooling. However, even on air, it didn’t throw up any performance issues for us, and this CPU seems more than happy to run at 100c, as scary as that sounds.

Stock

Overclocked