Power Consumption and Thermal Performance

The power consumption at the wall was measured with a 4K display being driven through the discrete GPU's HDMI port. In the graphs below, we compare the idle and load power of the ASRock DeskMini Z370 GTX1060 with other SFF PCs evaluated before. For load power consumption, we ran the AIDA64 System Stability Test with various stress components, as well as our power virus (Prime 95 and Furmark together) test and noted the maximum sustained power consumption at the wall.

Given the 65W Coffee Lake-S desktop CPU and a desktop GPU in the GTX 1060 (advertised with a 120W TDP, but, seemingly limited to 75W in the system), the idle power numbers close to 27W are as expected.

Our thermal stress routine starts with the system at idle, followed by four stages of different system loading profiles using the AIDA64 System Stability Test (each of 30 minutes duration). In the first stage, we stress the CPU, caches and RAM. In the second stage, we add the GPU to the above list. In the third stage, we stress the GPU standalone. In the final stage, we stress all the system components (including the disks). Beyond this, we leave the unit idle in order to determine how quickly the various temperatures in the system can come back to normal idling range. The various clocks, temperatures and power consumption numbers for the system during the above routine are presented in the graphs below.

The Core i7-8700 has a processor base frequency of 3.2 GHz, and a 65W TDP. We see that the thermal solution is able to maintain the 65W package power dissipation irrespective of the loading. In fact, the only time the package power goes below 65W for the CPU is when the GPUs are being stressed stand-alone. The GTX 1060 is also cooled appropriately and maintains its core frequency of 1.7 GHz easily throughout the stress test. That said, the MXM card seems to have a much lower power budget of 75W compared to a standard GTX 1060 desktop version at 120W. Temperatures max out at around 85C for the CPU package and 80C for the dGPU. Fan speeds range from 2800 RPM for the dGPU to 3200 RPM for the CPU.

The custom stress test is more interesting - Running Prime95 for an extended duration causes the core frequencies to drop to around 3 GHz, but, the package power remains constant at 65W throughout the time the workload is active. In fact, the core frequency goes up after Furmark is added to the running Prime95 workload. This shows that the package power is a better measure of the effectiveness of the thermal solution, rather than the core frequency alone. Another interesting aspect is that the Furmark workload doesn't pull up the GTX 1060 to its maximum frequency - rather, it tops out at around 1.4 GHz (instead of 1.7 GHz). The GPU power consumption is at 75W throughout the active duration of the Furmark workload. Sub-80C temperatures are maintained throughout the stress test, pointing to a very effective (albeit, noisy) thermal solution despite the small form factor of the system.

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