How much does the Xbox Series X consume and how much heat? - article
Now that the embargo on the console is completely lifted I can finally share some thoughts with you. We've already talked about how well backward compatibility works, while today we will talk about how a silent revolution is underway on the design front, emphasizing the word "silent".
Series X, in fact, practically does not feel. So much so that it mixes with the background noises of our office and my living room. Let's say we are at the level of Xbox one X, perhaps even better, which places it at the top of the ranking of silence. Sure, it consumes more but its form factor completely cancels out the noise problem.
The shape and dimensions of the console are different, in short, but not very far from One X. It shares its height, so to speak, and the impression is that it is designed to be positioned vertically. The hot air rises, so you get a slight cooling advantage as well, but let's just say it's better this way, to speak unscientifically.
This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Please enable cookies to view. Manage cookie settings Our impressions of Series X to date, plus some details on fuel consumption and temperatures.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel At the moment we can't talk in detail about the dashboard yet (which may even change before launch), but let's say we're practically at the level of what we've seen on Xbox One recently. If you are satisfied with the performance of the One X, you will be pleased to know that the dashboard here is even faster thanks to the leap forward made by the CPU and SSD, which results in the absence of latency.
It should be noted that the interface is 1080p and does not exceed 60fps, even if you set the console to 120Hz. SeriesX is designed for 4K and seeing the dashboard in Full HD is actually a little out of place. If native 1080p games enjoy good upscaling, the same cannot be said of the interface which by its nature does not get the best from this technique, and so we hope Microsoft wants to get back to working on it in the future, even if for now the ' the goal is to leave as much memory as possible available to developers.
A final note, before moving on to power consumption and thermal analysis: yes, Xbox Series X has 802GB of free disk space against the 781GB on Xbox One X. At first I thought it was due to some compression perhaps at the hardware level on the SoC, but Microsoft has confirmed that the dashboard is optimized for Series X and uses the Zen 2 CPU for decompression. In any case, having freed up some space for the players, and at the same time offering the Quick Resume, is a remarkable achievement. The 1TB Seagate expansion card is completely available for our contents (920GB), since it does not have to house system partitions.
If we take into account the fact that it is still early to talk about software (even though we recently told you about Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and soon we'll be talking about Gears Tactics and Gears 5), it's clear that our attentions now are all on the hardware. On paper we have machines with frequencies significantly higher than current-gen ones, which should translate into an increase in temperatures. The good news, however, is that this is not the case at all: the test results are much lower than I expected.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon in its normal mode at 1440p60 consumes between 140 and 160 watts with rare peaks around 170W, which places Series X practically at the level of Xbox One X. Dirt 5 consumes more in general, positioning itself more often around 160W and sometimes exceeding 170W in all three modes available in the preview code, even at 120Hz. These results are lower than expected, and prompt a question: what's the point of revolutionizing the shape of the console if the energy demands are in line with Xbox One X?
211 watts in Gears 5 is the maximum we have touched. Series X has a power supply that can deliver up to 315. Power consumption Xbox Series X Xbox One X Console off 0-2W 0.5W Dashboard 42W 48.5W Rise of the Tomb Raider (peak) 151W 170W Dead or Alive 6 (peak) 165W 177W A look at Gears 5 gives us the answer. The Smart Delivery system offers a clean game thanks to the capabilities of the console. Sure, it's practically a patch for an existing game, but it focuses on the RDNA 2 architecture and its specs such as variable shading. In games developed to be scalable like Gears 5, the load on the system is significant. We averaged around 200W with a peak peak of 211, which makes us think The Coalition are at the forefront of using the console.
This is still a good result for a launch title. , and the impression is that we will see increasing use of the system and the 315W power supply mounted on the console. That said, at the moment Gears 5 is a great case study for analyzing the thermal spectrum as well, and so I found a scene that consistently consumed over 200W and discovered something interesting in heat distribution.
The processor and the cards are in the center of the thermal spectrum with a temperature on the surface of the console of 48-49 degrees: warm, but not hot. The Series X base is cold, especially around the optical drive, which is practically at room temperature. As is clear, the unit is designed to suck cold air from the base and push it all the way around the monolith until it comes out from the top, and that's where the hottest spot is. The maximum recorded is 62 degrees, the highest temperature ever recorded in our tests (which is not surprising because it is also the most powerful console ever tested). Placing your hand on the console you can clearly feel the warm air, so the advice is to position the console so as not to obstruct its passage (advice that actually applies to all platforms).
air can be heard, then, but it is clear that saying to use Series X to heat the room is just a joke. We know we're consuming around 210 watts, and while we're at a higher level than Xbox One X, we're nowhere near a gaming PC with an RTX 3080 which, alone, requires 320W. If you're worried about the Seagate 1TB memory expansion overheating, then there's no reason: I kept it busy for 20 minutes of data movement and the maximum recorded temperature is 49 degrees (and it always kept constant transfer times, confirming that a critical temperature has never been reached).
Gallery: $ (document) .ready (function () {new InlineGallery ({target: "# inline-gallery-2120169", gid: "2120169", adzone: "", title: "", caption: "", type: "", version: "hd", gallery_id: "2120169", localisations: {previous: "Previous", next: "Next", all: "View all", loading: "Loading .. . ", full:" View at full resolution ", of:" di ", gallery:" View gallery ",}, images: [{" url ":" https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ / 2020-10-19-16-13 \ /Heat1.png "," caption ":" We used a Flir 1 thermal camera connected to an Android smartphone to do our thermal measurements of Xbox Series X. " }, {"url": "https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ / 2020-10-19-16-13 \ /Heat2.png", "caption": "Here you can see the metal 'sandwich' core of the Series X - the Scarlett processor is the main heat source here. "}, {" url ":" https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ /2020-10-19-16-13\/Heat3.png","caption":"A nother look at the center of the console and its thermal profile under load. "}, {" url ":" https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ / 2020-10-19-16 -13 \ /Heat4.png "," caption ":" Areas at the bottom of the unit - especially around the optical drive - are cold to the touch, essentially at room temperature. "}, {" Url ":" https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ / 2020-10-19-16-13 \ /Heat6.png "," caption ":" Moving to the top, the heat exhaust lights up - Series X expels heat almost like a chimney. "}, {" Url ":" https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ / 2020-10-19-16-13 \ /Heat7.png "," caption ":" 62 degress Celsius is the hottest that Series X gets at its exhaust - but the skin of the console elsewhere is much cooler. "}, {" url ":" https: \ / \ / d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront .net \ / 2020 \ / articles \ / 2020-10-19-16-13 \ /Heat8.png "," caption ":" Does the 1TB Storage Card get too hot to the touch? Not based on our thermal tests after 20 minutes of copying files to and from the drive. "}]});}); This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Please enable cookies to view. Manage cookie settings In short, Xbox Series X is a very powerful console but it is still a console. Its design and size are justified by the need to use more energy without overheating and making too much noise. Nothing to say about silence, but we renew the advice on positioning: make sure to position your next-gen console in such a way as to guarantee a correct air flow.
Going back to talking about consumption, in the table above you can see some In terms of maximum peaks, the comparison with Xbox One X is interesting: the exact same 4K30 footage from Rise of the Tomb Raider shows that Series X is clearly more efficient than One X. Dead or Alive 6, then, is a revelation: the performances are or up to double but consumption is constantly lower than the old console. Remarkable. It should be noted that in standby mode the console consumes 29W, a fact that led me to turn it off completely.
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From all this analysis we can draw another conclusion: at its best, Xbox Series X has performance that should be more or less in line with an RTX 2080, and even adding the Zen 2 CPU at maximum load does not exceed the 211W with the games we were able to try. This makes us think that AMD's upcoming RX 6000 GPUs will have a very interesting performance / power ratio (rumored to have 80CU at 2GHz, while Series X has 52 at 1.825GHz).
As you read, i our tests have given very positive results. First of all, we now know that we don't have to worry about power consumption and temperatures despite the Xbox Series X being more powerful than current machines. The impression is that on the thermal front a lot of time has been spent in the design phase given the results, while as far as consumption is concerned there is a step forward, but it is not so relevant compared to Xbox One X. Let's say that we are in consumption. more or less at the level of the first PlayStation 3.
The second good news is that the central processor of PlayStation 5 is smaller but with a higher frequency and with a nice big heatsink, which makes us think that the '350W power supply is unlikely to be put to the test. And finally, the efficiency of the RDNA 2 architecture looks promising, which makes one look forward to the second generation of Navi graphics cards, which should have the means to compete on par with Nvidia's remarkable RTX 3000 series.
Competition is always good for the industry and great for us players. The next-gen is upon us and it doesn't matter whether you play on PC or console: great things await us, everywhere.
