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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 (at the wall) is measured while loading only the CPU using Prime95′s in-place large 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.
Power efficiency is not the strongest aspect of Asus' X99-A. The board uses high levels of energy at idle, indicating that the digital VRM controller cannot or does not (be it a hardware or programming reason) drop CPU VCore levels as quickly as the competing boards' solutions (except the overclocked MSI configuration).
Load power consumption numbers are also higher than the competition's. Without notable add-on controllers being used on the Asus motherboard (that aren't used on the MSI and Gigabyte parts), higher voltage levels and less efficient power delivery components are likely to be the primary factors for increased power consumption.
Luke, fantastic review. I am interested in two things.
Firstly, is the M.2 slot physically blocked by a second graphics card. For example, 2x4GB EVGA GTX 980? This card extends the whole width of this motherboard and I suspect the second card would occupy the third PCIe slot (PCIEX16_3 on the schematic). Due to the thickness of the card, I am worried that the M.2 slot is obscured.
Secondly, what benefit would I or other readers experience in your opinion by upgrading to the x99 Deluxe motherboard given the following components:
> Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E 8 Core
> 2x 4GB EVGA GTX 980
> 8x8GB Corsair DDR4 Vengeance
> 250GB Samsung 840 EVO Basic SSD SATA III
Thanks for your thoughts.