ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard Review

Power consumption is very important today, with people more aware of the rising costs of living. Adopting a more efficient computer will reduce the cost across a year. That said, someone running an overclocked, overvolted system will not be that concerned with power consumption.

We used a calibrated meter to measure the power at the wall. No monitors were factored into the readings. All systems included the same graphics card, memory configuration and hard drive population.

We measured wattage at the socket when running Cinebench R11.5 64 bit which loads all cores to 100% utilisation. The graphics card was inactive during the reading.

We also rated power drain in the last (combined) test of 3DMark 11 which puts a strain on both processor and graphics card – mirroring a real world gaming result.

When the Core i7 3770k is overclocked with 1.35v @ 4.8ghz, the system demands 228 watts under Cinebench R11.5 64 bit load. This drops to 117 watts when idle and rises to around 350 Watts when running the ‘combined' test in 3DMark 11. This is not a power hungry system, although it would consume less power at default speeds with the reference voltage.

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