Rumor suggests Intel’s next-gen flagship CPU could eat your PC’s power supply for breakfast — but don’t panic yet

• Nova Lake flagship is rumored to hit 700W of power consumption
• That’s a fleeting peak-wattage figure, though (and still just a rumor)
• The reality may be that the next-gen flagship is more of an enthusiast CPU than it has previously been – but that won’t necessarily reflect on the lower tiers of Nova Lake

Intel‘s next-gen flagship desktop processor has been rumored to reach eye-opening levels of power consumption – although there’s a lot to unpack here, and we shouldn’t be panicking about CPUs eating monstrous amounts of wattage just yet.

First of all, the rumor itself – and it is just a rumor – comes from a regular hardware leaker on X, Kopitekimi7, as flagged 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 reaches a power consumption of over 700 Watts at “full-load”.

I’ll come back to exactly what that means in a moment, but obviously it’s a huge figure, remembering that this is the power being piped to the CPU, and only that (not the full system load of wattage across all the PC’s components, as somebody on X asked for a clarification about).

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 (tiny) cores – there are 32 and four of these respectively, plus 16 performance (normal) 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 fretting about ‘Supernova Lake’ heat levels

Okay, so what’s going on here, and what could it mean for the average PC buyer (or upgrader) when Nova Lake turns up? (These desktop chips might debut later this year, or possibly in 2027 – Intel hasn’t confirmed exactly when, though we should get some silicon in 2026, but it could be the laptop variants for all we know).

The figure floated by Kopitekimi7 – which may or may not be accurate, it should be noted – is 700W under full load, which the leaker clarifies is with power limits removed. In other words, this is theoretically the absolute limit of power that can temporarily peak with the CPU (known as ‘PL4’), which, crucially, is a momentary load, not a working level of wattage.

Of course, you still need a PC with a motherboard and power supply (plus CPU cooling) that can deal with such a fleeting surge. And on top of that, we can compare this to the PL4 of Intel’s Raptor Lake flagship processor, which saw a peak of 314W – so this is a good deal more than double that.

In effect, this is a hint that Nova Lake could be more power-hungry than we expected. However, I wouldn’t go leaping to conclusions yet, because we don’t know if this leak is accurate. And even if it is, the rest of Nova Lake may not be built along those lines.

Remember, this is a dual-chip flagship with a lot of cores, and it’s a processor that looks to be more in HEDT (high-end desktop) territory – a very expensive CPU aimed at enthusiasts who need a processor to do seriously heavyweight work.

The average consumer or gamer won’t be looking at this Core Ultra 9 flagship, then – 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 work better for gaming with the bLLC cache setup, too.

So, what this points to more than anything is an even more heavyweight, pricier flagship coming with Nova Lake. Away from that top-end CPU, it’s possible Nova Lake could 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 refresh), where power envelopes were pushed very (too) hard – with its brand-new Nova Lake desktop range built to try and take the initiative back from AMD’s Ryzen silicon (following a string of desktop mishaps on Intel’s part).

For high-end PCs, though, the Nova Lake flagship could be a handful for a power supply to deal with when paired with a power-hungry GPU like an Nvidia RTX 5090, for example.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel – ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ – was published by Hachette UK in 2013).