Power Consumption, Overclocking
Moving on to power consumption and here in Handbrake the results might look a bit odd, given the 12-core and 24-core parts are seen pushing total system consumption to similar levels, there are however a few reasons for this. Firstly Handbrake doesn't utilize the 24 and 32-core parts very well, so they aren't being pushed as hard as they could be. The other reasons include clock speed and voltage. The 2920X maintained an all-core clock speed of 3.95 GHz at 1.212v while the 2970WX ran at just 3.55 GHz using 1.075v. That's a 10% decrease in frequency and an 11% decrease in voltage.
Blender is a better test to show maximum system draw. Here the 2990WX pushed total system consumption to 345 watts while the 2970WX system consumed 10% less power. This time the 12-core model is seen reducing system consumption by 15% which is reasonable given it runs at higher clock speeds with more voltage.
In the end when fully utilized the 2970WX only pushed total system consumption 8% higher than that of the 7980XE and remember it was 30% faster in our Blender test. Meanwhile the 2920X pushed total consumption to 264 watts which is basically what we saw from the 2950X and 7960X.
Operating Temperatures
When it came to temperatures both CPUs ran extremely cool, with the Enermax Liqtech 360 TR4 in place we were looking at peak temperatures of 40-45 degrees after an hour long Blender stress test which is insane.
Therefore I removed the liquid cooler and tried out a big air-cooler, I went for the Wraith Ripper. The 2920X maxed out at just 61 degrees after an hour and again this allowed it to run at the same 3.95 GHz using 1.212v on the MSI X399 Creation.
Unbelievably the 2970WX ran just 2 degrees hotter hitting 63 degrees, again using the Wraith Ripper air-cooler on the MSI X399 Creation using default BIOS settings, just XMP was loaded. So when it comes to overclocking you likely won't be limited by thermals.
Overclocking
Speaking of which, I could get both CPUs into Windows at 4.2 GHz but only the 2970WX was able to pass our stress tests at that frequency. The 2920X would lock up after about 10 minutes of Blender and in the time we had available I couldn't stabilize the overclock. That said, with 1.3v at 4.1 GHz it was rock solid and spat out a score of 2653 pts, a 6% boost over the stock out of the box performance.