ASRock Z87 OC Formula Motherboard Review

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 load on the CPU and motherboard power delivery components.

Our recordings show the power consumption at idle barely rising when going from stock to overclocked frequencies. There are two reasons that we would put this down to. One is due to the already-high ‘stock' VCore of 1.280V set by ASRock. The other is the tweaked fan profile for our overclocked configuration which could result in slightly reduced power consumption.

Load power consumption figures fall in line with what have seen on other Z87 motherboards, although given its lack of a PLX switch, the Z87 OC Formula's stock energy usage is high. This is due to the higher-than-average CPU power consumption forced by the 1.280V VCore.

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