Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 (Z77) Motherboard Review

Power Consumption

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.

Given this board is all about the highest level of performance, we are not surprised to see that it has some of the highest power readings that we have seen at stock speeds. Surprisingly though the increase in power when overclocked was not as great as we expected with only ~15W increase in consumption at both idle and load. This shows that the board is very efficient on its consumption at higher processor frequencies.