Copyright
©
2012
congatec
AG
TCEDm10
15/94
1.5
Power Consumption
The power consumption values listed in this document were measured under a controlled environment. The hardware used for testing includes
a conga-TCA module, conga-Cdebug carrier board, CRT monitor, SATA drive, and USB keyboard. The conga-Cdebug is modified so that
the 12V input is only routed to the module and all other circuity on the carrier itself is powered by the 5V input. The SATA drive was powered
externally by an ATX power supply so that it does not influence the power consumption value that is measured for the module. The USB
keyboard was detached once the module was configured within the OS. All recorded values were averaged over a 30 second time period.
Cooling of the module was done by the module specific heatspreader and a fan cooled heatsink to measure the power consumption under
normal thermal conditions.
The conga-Cdebug originally does not provide 5V standby power. Therefore, an extra 5V_SB connection without any external loads was made.
Using this setup, the power consumption of the module in S3 (Standby) mode was measured directly.
Each module was measured while running Windows 7 Professional 32Bit, Hyper Threading enabled, Speed Step enabled and Power Plan set
to “Power Saver”. This setting ensures that Core™ processors run in LFM (lowest frequency mode) with minimal core voltage during desktop
idle. Each module was tested while using a 1GB memory modules. Using different sizes of RAM will cause slight variances in the measured
results.
To measure the worst case power consumption the cooling solution was removed and the CPU core temperature was allowed to run up to
between 95° and 100°C while running 100% workload with the Power Plan set to “Balanced”. The peak current value was then recorded. This
value should be taken into consideration when designing the system’s power supply to ensure that the power supply is sufficient during worst
case scenarios.
Power consumption values were recorded during the following stages:
Windows 7 (32 bit)
•
Desktop Idle (power plan = Power Saver)
•
100% CPU workload (see note below, power plan = Power Saver)
•
100% CPU workload at approximately 100°C peak power consumption (power plan = Balanced)
•
Suspend to RAM. Supply power for S3 mode is 5V.
Note
A software tool was used to stress the CPU to maximum frequency.
