TDP
What is TDP
TDP (The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point) is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often a CPU, GPU or system on a chip) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate under any workload[1]
Although Some sources state that the peak power rating for a microprocessor is usually 1.5 times the TDP rating.
In short, TDP is used to indicate the amount of heat that the component could produce in the worst condition.
Different companies do use TDP in different ways.
For example:
- Intel's TDP is the amount of heat the worst binned chip could produce when put through the worst kind of torture (at stock settings ofcourse), while most intel chips could not even come close to the TDP they are rated at.
- Nvidia GPU chips are a whole different story, they use TDP in such a way that the indicated TDP is the maximum amount of power it is allowed to pull. If the chip wants to pull more, it will get throttled to the point where it will maintain its TDP value.
- AMD GPU's are the same as Nvidia GPU's, but the key difference is that Nvidia's TDP is for the whole card while AMD only indicates the amount of power the silicon uses.
TDP is always just the amount of power, measured it watts (which is the same as joules per second), the part could consume. in case CPU pretty much all the power a CPU will consume will get transfered into heat.
What is TDP in terms of heat output[2]
TDP is measured (or stated) in Watts, and a Watt is one Joule per second (1W=1J/s)
Joule can be converted to celsius heat unit as (1 J/s = 0.00052656507646646 celsius/s)
as the Total TDP in a system can convert into celsius/s using the web calculator if we can sum up total TDP of the system.