Power Consumption and Thermals
Power Consumption
To measure power consumption we use a killawatt meter and measure the total system power draw at the wall. We run three different use-case scenarios for 5 minutes and take the average reading.
Thermal Performance
To measure the thermal properties of each motherboard we take the temperature of three different locations using a Rosewill infrared thermometer. We measure the hottest point on the PCH (chipset) heatsink, the first VRM heatsink (which is closest to the rear I/O) and the second VRM heatsink (which is closest to the RAM lanes). The graphs are sorted by the first VRM Heatsink temperature as this is normally where most of the CPU VRM phases reside.
Just upgraded my rig a couple of days ago, decided to go with the H97 and an i7 4790. the motherboard is awesome for something termed as budget, I bought it at a retailer for $130 (AUD) I was considering spending the extra $300 for a high end. z97. I’m happy I didn’t 🙂