TDP (thermal design power)

PC Builds

A manufacturer rating, in watts, indicating roughly how much heat a CPU or GPU is designed to dissipate under a sustained load. It's commonly used as a rough guide for sizing a cooler and a power supply, but it isn't a precise measure of power consumption: under short boosts many modern chips can draw noticeably more than their nominal TDP, and different makers define the figure differently. Concrete example: a CPU listed at a given TDP may briefly pull well above it when all cores boost. Buying impact: treat TDP as a ballpark for cooling and PSU planning and build in headroom rather than matching it exactly — under-sizing the cooler or power supply to the bare TDP number can lead to throttling or instability under heavy, sustained load.