Power Consumption under Light Usage
In this test, I used each machine over many days performing a variety of general desktop tasks including, but not limited, to web surfing, email, compiling source code, watching video, listening to music, and running virtualized machines.
The chart shows the power consumption of each machine. The figures are the power draw for the machine, not just the CPU. Even with light desktop usage, the N100 feels very sluggish compared to the ASRock.
The ASRock NUC Box 255-H is the fastest of the machines yet has a power consumption not much higher than the amazing frugal N100 (which has a 6W TDP processor) under general desktop usage.
Bear in mind the N100 machine is significantly slower than any of the other machines. For example, in my benchmark article, the ASRock’s NUC is more than 6 times quicker in almost every CPU benchmark. Even with light desktop usage, the N100 feels very sluggish compared to the ASRock NUC.
Notes about the chart:
- The tasks do not include any activities that are GPU intensive such as gaming, running locally-hosted AI apps, video recording / live streaming etc.
- While the tests access software that uses the GPU (such as Xorg), the GPU power consumption is minimal (with the exception of the i5-12400F as the machine’s dedicated graphics card draws 21W at idle).
- Two screens are used on each machine.
- The i5-12400F machine hosts a dedicated graphics card, whereas the other machines all use onboard graphics.
- Both the i5-12400F and i5-10400 machines offer BIOS power management options. This power management is enabled. The other machines don’t offer this type of power management functionality.
- The Balanced CPU governor is used.
- The machines are running Ubuntu 25.04.
Next page: Page 3 – Full CPU Load
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Page 3 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 4 – Electricity Costs
Complete list of articles in this series:
| ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the NUC BOX-255H |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the NUC BOX-255H |
| Power | Testing and comparing the power consumption under various workloads |