- Nova Lake flagship rumored to hit 700W power consumption
- However, this is a fleeting maximum power figure (and remains just a rumor).
- The reality may be that the next-gen flagship will be a more enthusiastic CPU than before, but that won’t necessarily be reflected in the lower tiers of Nova Lake.
Intel’s next-generation flagship desktop processor is rumored to hit eye-opening levels of power consumption, although there’s a lot to unpack here, and we shouldn’t panic about the CPUs consuming monstrous amounts of power just yet.
First of all, the rumor itself (and it’s just a rumor) comes from a regular hardware leak on X, Kopitekimi7, as noted by VideoCardz.
The top Nova Lake processor, which is rumored to have 52 cores (and is an unlocked ‘K’ model that can be overclocked, which is why the leaker refers to it as ‘NVL-K’), apparently achieves a power consumption of over 700 Watts at ‘full load’.
I’ll come back to what exactly that means in a moment, but it’s obviously a huge number, remembering that this is the power being channeled to the CPU, and only that (not the full power system load on all PC components, as someone at X asked for clarification).
If you’re wondering how the Nova Lake desktop flagship has 52 cores, it’s because most of them are efficiency cores or low-power (small) cores; there are 32 and four of these respectively, plus 16 (regular) performance cores.
This Core Ultra 9 flagship is supposedly a dual-chip model, meaning those cores are split across two chiplets, as already seen with AMD’s top desktop CPUs, and Nova Lake has Big Last-Level Cache (bLLC), which is essentially Intel’s equivalent to AMD’s 3D V-Cache (X3D models).
Analysis: It’s too early to start worrying about ‘Supernova Lake’ heat levels
Ok, so what’s going on here and what could it mean for the average PC buyer (or upgrader) when Nova Lake appears? (These desktop chips could debut later this year, or possibly in 2027; Intel hasn’t confirmed exactly when, although we should get some silicon in 2026, but for all we know, they could be the laptop variants.)
The figure raised by Kopitekimi7, which may or may not be accurate, it should be noted, is 700 W at full load, which the leaker clarifies that power limits are eliminated. In other words, this is theoretically the absolute limit of power that the CPU can temporarily peak (known as ‘PL4’), which, fundamentally, is a momentary load, not a working power level.
Of course, you still need a PC with a motherboard and power supply (plus CPU cooling) that can handle such a fleeting surge. And on top of that, we can compare this to the PL4 of Intel’s flagship Raptor Lake processor, which peaked at 314W, so it’s well over double that.
Indeed, this is an indication that Nova Lake could consume more energy than we expected. However, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet, because we don’t know if this leak is accurate. And even if it were, the rest of Nova Lake may not be built along those lines.
Remember, this is a dual-chip flagship with many cores, and it’s a processor that seems to be more in HEDT (high-end desktop) territory – a very expensive CPU aimed at enthusiasts who need a processor to do oh really heavy work.
So the average consumer or gamer won’t look at this Core Ultra 9 flagship, even less so than would normally be the case with an Intel flagship. They’ll be much better served by the Core Ultra 7 model, which is rumored to be a single-chiplet CPU, and that configuration may also work better for gaming with the bLLC cache setup.
So what this points more than anything is to an even heavier and more expensive flagship coming with Nova Lake. Away from that high-end CPU, Nova Lake is likely to be more efficient in terms of power consumption, and in fact I’d bet on that. I don’t think Intel is going to retread old ground, as seen with Raptor Lake (and its update), where the power limits were pushed too (too) hard, with its new Nova Lake range of desktops designed to try and win back AMD’s Ryzen silicon initiative (after a series of desktop setbacks by Intel).
However, for high-end PCs, the Nova Lake flagship could be a handful for a power supply when paired with a power-hungry GPU like an Nvidia RTX 5090, for example.
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