Intel’s next-gen Nova Lake-S desktop processors are reportedly power hogs, gobbling above 700W if authorised to. But it’s not all brute force, as the Core Ultra 400 Series, which is the official name, is also said to feature a deeper power state capable of pushing efficiency to new levels.
According to @kopite7kimi on X, a reliable leaker of all things Intel, Nova Lake-S could pull an impressive 700W when fully loaded and stress tested, though only when all power limits are removed. In other words, these Core Ultra 400 Series CPUs will likely be thermally limited, requiring powerful cooling when pushed to their limit.
For reference, current Core Ultra 9 285K chips can draw up to 490W in their PL4 (power level 4) setting, but only in short bursts, making 700W sound reasonable for a 52-core beast. Furthermore, the 285K’s sustained package power during typical workloads like multi-core rendering is substantially lower, around 250W, meaning we can expect about half of what today’s rumour is claiming for Nova Lake-S during normal use.
Understandably, this massive power requirement mainly concerns the flagship model packing 52-cores. As far as rumours go, these are split into two compute tiles, each housing 8 P-cores plus 16 E-cores, with the remaining 4 LP-E-cores located on the SoC tile. While simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is once more absent – like Arrow Lake-S, Nova Lake-S is expected to offer a larger LLC (last-level cache) reaching 288MB on the flagship model. If correct, this will make the Core Ultra 400 worthy competitors to AMD’s X3D CPUs, probably outperforming them both in professional and gaming tasks.
Nova Lake-S is also said to be the first desktop processor series to implement an even lower power state capable of disabling entire compute tiles to save power when idling. According to @jaykihn0, Intel’s Core Ultra 400 CPUs can boot using only the LP-E-cores located in the SoC tile, adding that P-core clusters can now be disabled.
The leaker also indicated that Nova Lake-S will be able to measure and report on-die temperatures between -64°C and 100°C – if Negative Temperature Reporting is enabled. However, thermal throttling cannot be disabled, with a TJMax set to 100°C.
Now, while out-of-the-box operation of Core Ultra 400 processors should be reasonably efficient, overclockers may need a much chonkier cooling system than what was required by Arrow Lake-S. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 52-core model pulled a sustained 350W under heavy loads. This is important to keep in mind for those upgrading from Core Ultra 200 platforms, as Nova Lake-S should be compatible with the same coolers.
Imagine pairing a 52-core beast with, say, a factory-overclocked GeForce RTX 5090. Enough reason to hunting for a 2,000W PSU.
Intel Nova Lake-S CPUs are expected to debut later this year, or early 2027, alongside a new LGA-1954 platform and 900-series chipsets. It will compete with AMD’s upcoming Zen 6 chips, said to pack up to 24-cores on the existing AM5 platform. A high-end fight is brewing nicely.
