Gigabyte Z77-D3H (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.

At idle, the board came in-line with the others and outputted around 74 Watts. At load, the power usage for the whole system peaked at 224 Watts, which was once again, around the same power usage as the other boards tested. By overclocking, obviously the power usage went up, but only by 20-30 Watts on both idle and load tests.