TDP

TDP, thermal design power, is the amount of heat in watts that a chip's cooling system has to remove when the part runs at its sustained rated clocks. It's set by the manufacturer as a cooling target, not a hard limit on power draw. A chip can pull more than its TDP during short boosts, and less at idle.

An Intel Xeon Platinum 8480+ carries a 350 W TDP, an AMD EPYC 9654 carries 360 W, and an NVIDIA H100 PCIe card is rated at 350 W. NVIDIA labels the same idea differently on GeForce cards, calling it TGP, or total graphics power, where an RTX 4090 is rated at 450 W. Intel splits the number in two: PL1, the sustained figure equal to TDP, and PL2, a higher boost ceiling the chip holds for a limited window before dropping back.

Sum the TDP of every CPU, GPU, and drive in a build to size the power supply and chassis airflow, then add headroom on top. Boost power runs above TDP, so a supply or PDU sized to the nameplate total has no margin left for a full-load moment.

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Last verified August 29, 2026.