Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 (Z77) Motherboard Review

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.

Being a Micro-ATX board, we were keen to see how its power usage would reflect in these tests. At idle, the board uses 72 Watts but at load, uses an extremely low 217 Watts which is a lot less than the other boards we tested, including the Maximus V Gene from Asus. When overclocked, the power levels increases slightly, but still managed to stay under 300 Watts at load.