We measured the power consumption with the system resting at the Windows 7 desktop, representing idle values.
The power consumption of our entire test system is measured at the wall while loading only the CPU using Prime95's Small FFTs setting. The rest of the system's components were operating in their idle states, hence the increased power consumption values (in comparison to the idle figures) are largely related to the CPU's individual power usage.
Power consumption was also recorded while playing Battlefield 3, representing gaming values.
Efficient and advanced electrical components, such as gold capacitors and a 12+2 power phase, allow the ASRock 990FX Extreme9 to deliver clean power to the AMD FX-8350 processor, resulting in a low idle power usage at stock frequencies.
The high-end electrical components also allow the ASRock 990FX Extreme9 motherboard to overclock the FX-8350 processor to 4.6GHz, without its power usage increasing significantly.