To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the system takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment.
With the X79 FTW we found the power draw to be fairly respectable at stock speeds but this raised by around 50W at both idle and load once overclocked. We did find power consumption peaked to over 400W when overclocked in some of the all combined GPU and CPU tests, but this is more down to the GTX 580 power requirements.
This is just amazing to the PC gamers.
This is just amazing to the PC gamers.