AMD Ryzen 9 7950X & Ryzen 7 7700X ‘Zen 4’ Review

For CPU load results, we read the power draw after running 10 minutes of the Cinebench R23 nT all-core rendering test. The same test parameters are used for temperature readings.

The power consumption of our entire test system (at the wall) is shown in the chart. We also include the reported CPU Package Power.

Power Consumption

Power draw readings are accurate to around +/-5W under heavy load due to instantaneous fluctuations in the value.

Looking at a comparison of power draw after 10-minutes of Cinebench nT loading, we can see just how thirsty the new Ryzen 9 7950X flagship is set to be.

215W of package power – because the 360mm AIO in a 25C ambient could not maintain 230W – is a very lofty power draw! This was almost 350W from the wall, and that’s before the GPU load is added into the equation.

In fact, only the Core i9-12900K running under the motherboard vendors’ ludicrous power settings demanded more energy. The 7950X’s power consumption increase versus its Ryzen 9 5950X predecessor is roughly 50%.

With a 105W TDP limiting package power delivery to 142W maximum, the Ryzen 7 7700X is clearly less juicy than its bigger brother. And because of that 142W allowance, its power consumption falls very much in line with the Ryzen 5000 series predecessors.

It’s also far more power friendly than the unleashed-mode Core i7-12700K to the tune of more than 20W.

As a note, it looks like there is clearly plenty of further optimisation for platform power draw to be made on the new AM5 motherboard.

We will take a closer look at differing power draw levels of the X- or B-series chipsets when the time comes. And when BIOS and platform updates have been made available, we’ll be in a better position to examine AMD’s claims of improved energy efficiency under idle-type conditions.

AMD made it clear that they wanted to remove the power shackles of the high-end CPUs so that Precision Boost 2 could squeeze out all the performance for buyers. The result of this decision is very lofty power levels at the high end.

In isolation, that’s absolutely fine if the performance and tweaking warrants such lofty power draws but also scales with different coolers – as Precision Boost 2 will.

We criticised the Core i9-12900K for high power draw that mandates expensive cooling. But that was more in relation to its inability to convert power consumption into market-leading multi-core performance. AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X does indeed convert its high power draw into market-leading multi-core performance.

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