Intel NUC

Intel NUC 13 Pro Mini PC Running Linux: Power Consumption

Last Updated on October 30, 2023

Electricity Costs

To calculate the cost per year we assume each machine is used 8 hours a day under light usage. A kWh is £0.27 (the current price cap from October 2023 in the UK).

ComputerWhCost
Mini PC Intel NUC 13 Pro i7-1360P CPU17.7£13.95
Desktop PC Intel i5-12400 CPU (with dedicated graphics card)64.5£50.85
Desktop PC Intel i5-10400 CPU32.1£25.31
  • The annual cost is the electricity cost of the computer only. To calculate the overall running costs, you’ll need to factor in peripherals such as monitors, speakers, external devices etc.
  • Power management is enabled in the BIOS for the two desktop machines. The NUC doesn’t offer this functionality.
  • The Balanced CPU governor is used. We find using the NUC 13 Pro as a desktop machine with the Power Saver CPU governor enabled greatly limits its usability.

The next table shows the annual electricity cost with each machine headless running at idle. This information may be useful if you are thinking of using the machine say as a NAS server and want a baseline running cost. Again, we’ve pricing a kWh at £0.27 (the current price cap from October 2023 in the UK).

ComputerWhCost
Mini PC Intel NUC 13 Pro i7-1360P12.7£30.04
Desktop PC Intel i5-12400 CPU (with dedicated graphics card)37.3£88.22
Desktop PC Intel i5-10400 CPU14.1£33.35

The next article in the series will look at the NUC’s P-Cores and E-Cores in detail.

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:

Intel NUC 13 Pro Mini PC
Part 1Introduction to the series with interrogation of system
Part 2Benchmarking the Mini PC
Part 3Installing Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop
Part 4Configuring Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop
Part 5Power Consumption
Part 6P-Cores and E-Cores
Part 7Gaming
Part 8Installing and Configuring Manjaro
Part 9BIOS options
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Please read our FAQ before making a comment.

7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Nigel Bolton
Nigel Bolton
11 months ago

How many watts does the NUC’s GPU take when idling?

Patrick
Patrick
11 months ago

Very interesting article, thank you 🙂

We find using the NUC 13 Pro as a desktop machine with the Power Saver CPU governor enabled greatly limits its usability.

Do you mean the machine is noticeably slow even for basic usage (web surfing, watching videos, email, etc.)?

Dave "Nacho" Skelton
Dave "Nacho" Skelton
11 months ago

Have you tried to experiment with powertop to see if you can get the idle power consumption lower?