Intel Core i7 3930K & Asus P9X79 WS LGA2011 WorkStation Review

To measure power consumption of the system we firstly leave the processor at default clock speeds and voltages and load it with Cinebench R11.5 64 bit. Next we overclock to 4.8ghz with 1.46 volts and measure the power drain after running the same Cinebench R11.5 64 bit test.

Lastly we install two GTX590's in Quad SLi and run at the same 4.8ghz overclocked system speeds to get an idea of a ‘worst case scenario'.

At reference clocks the system is actually very power efficient considering the performance available. By comparison we have measured 240watts from the AMD FX8150 Black Edition at reference clock speeds. Adding extra voltage and increasing the system demand effectively doubles the power requirement at the socket when under load.

After adding two Nvidia GTX590's to the system and running a CPU/GPU intensive benchmark (3dmark 11) we record a power demand of 904 watts at the socket. A 1000W power supply would be the minimum although we would recommend a 1250W power supply if you are considering building a similar system.

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