Intel power draw leaks have surfaced and let’s say, we’re glad some of these CPUs aren’t going to see the light of day. While having a 40-core CPU in your PC would be cool, is it worth it for 667W? That is more than the RTX 4090 draws on average, it begs the question, can any motherboard even push that much power through the voltage rails to the CPU? Intel certainly isn’t too concerned with Arrow Lake’s power consumption.
Today’s leak comes to us from Jaykihn on X, where they released a spreadsheet screenshot with various Intel SKU configurations. The CPUs aren’t specifically named, but we can see the core configs and PL power consumption of the prospective Arrow Lake CPUs. And among the lineup of CPUs is the monster that is the subject of today’s article.
Intel canceled a 40-core CPU
The leak also includes some mobile-focused Panther-Lake SKUs which should be on track for 2025 production, according to Intel. If you turn your attention to the first entry on the list, you’ll see a 40-core CPU canceled, thank god. Power companies around the world can breathe a sigh of relief. The same can be said for the other 40-core config, and the 32-core next to it.
It is important to note that the PL4 is the highest power level we have seen on a CPU so far, and is a limit that is not exceeded, according to Intel. But to this day, the highest-consuming desktop-grade Intel CPU that we could find is the 13900KS, with a PL4 of 420W but we’ve never observed a CPU reach anywhere near that before, not even the 14900K. The PL4 serves as more of an overcurrent protection than anything else, but it just goes to show that Intel is definitely expecting an increase in power consumption if they jacked the PL4 up by 240W.
If you take a closer look, you will see that these monstrous numbers reside under the “Extreme” tab, and we couldn’t think of a better word for it. Even the PL2 under extreme is 352W, which is the power consumption of the CPU while boosting. That’s still 100W more than the 14900K. Which I suppose makes sense for a 40-core CPU.
Back to reality now, let’s take a look at the best “not canceled” CPU, we can see that it has an 8+16+4Xe configuration, but it’s marked as SKU unknown. This is the same core config we see in the 14900K, so it’s good to see that Intel is sticking with what “works” degradation of 13th and 14th-gen CPUs aside. It’s good to see that the “performance” tab yields the same Power levels as what we’re used to.
It seems, however, that it doesn’t matter as it’s not likely to see the light of day. It’s unclear whether these leaks are accurate, it could just be a random spreadsheet someone made. I’m not sure what anyone would gain from that, but people have done more for less.
