This is a series looking at the BOSGAME M4 Plus Mini PC running Linux. In this series, I examine every aspect of this Mini PC in detail from a Linux perspective. I’ll compare the machine with other machines to put the results into context.
The BOSGAME M4 Plus Mini PC is a powerful computer based on an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor with integrated Radeon 780M graphics. It’s significantly cheaper than some of the other mini PCs I’m currently writing about. The machine came with 32GB of RAM and 1TB NVMe disk which will be sufficient for most use cases.
For this article in the series, I’m looking at the power consumption of the BOSGAME M4 Plus. I’ll compare it to 4 mini PCs and a couple of desktop processors as well as a couple of desktop machines. Specifically, the Minisforum AI X1 Pro (“Ryzen AI 9 HX 370”), ASRock Industrial NUC BOX-255H with an Intel (“Core Ultra 7 255H”), the Intel NUC i7-1360P (“i7-1360P”), DreamQuest Intel N100 (“N100”), and desktop machines with “i5-10400” and “i5-12400F” processors.
Let’s start with the power consumption when each machine is idling.
The BOSGAME M4’s result is very surprising with the lowest power consumption at idle for all the machines tested. The M4 has an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, a processor with a TDP of 35-54W. Its power consumption with the screens on or off is lower than even the N100 machine. The N100 has a TDP of only 6W. But don’t assume that a processor with an extremely low TDP is necessarily going to have the lowest power consumption at idle. The results above prove that’s not what TDP measures.
TDP most commonly means Thermal Design Power, a measurement of the maximum amount of heat a computer component like a CPU or GPU can produce under normal operating conditions.
- The chart measures the power consumption of each system (not just the CPU).
- The i5-12400F machine hosts a dedicated graphics card, whereas the other machines all have onboard graphics. Power consumption even at idle is much higher with a dedicated graphics card, in this case an NVIDIA Asus RTX 3060 Ti. That graphics card, itself, consumes 11W with the machine at idle with two screens off, 21W idle with two screens on, as reported by nvidia-smi.
- The BOSGAME M4 Plus, Minisforum AI X1 Pro, i5-12400F and i5-10400 machines offer BIOS power management options. This power management is enabled. The other machines don’t offer power management functionality.
- For the i5-10400 machine, the BIOS offers options to enable Asus Performance Enhancement as well as a Performance Mode. With both these options enabled, the PC idles at 22.2W and 24.9W with both screens off and on respectively. Having the power functionality disabled therefore makes a significant difference.
- The Power Saver CPU governor is used.
- The machines are running Ubuntu 25.04 with the exception of the Minisforum machine which is running Manjaro (an Arch-based distribution).
Next page: Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light usage
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:
| BOSGAME M4 Plus Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the machine |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the BOSGAME M4 Plus |
| Power | Testing and comparing the power consumption |