
Ask HN: Does 10% CPU usage equals 10% (of TDP) power consumption? - ramshanker
While going through stackoverflow architecture[1], I noticed that they try to keep CPU usage very low. Like &lt;5%. Does that mean a 100+ TDP CPU is consuming &lt;5 Watt? If that is the case long term than, it would change all the power budget planning. I mean the popular wisdom of &quot;power costing more than hardware&quot; might change drastically if we run those CPU at very low usage.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nickcraver.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;17&#x2F;stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition&#x2F;<p>EDIT: Looking for a home server.
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Bigrio
Well that depends a lot on the cpu, some have very low power states that can
drop the power used to just a watt or two at idle, these are more common in
laptops. Server cpu's may not drop down as low, or as quickly, in order to
respond quickly to new requests. Before the days of speed stepping, the cpu
would use similar power regardless of utilization. This article from 2008
highlights some info for xeon.
[https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/m/d/4/1/d/8/p...](https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/m/d/4/1/d/8/power_consumption.pdf)

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Zekio
TDP != Power Consumption

