Asus X99-A 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 (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.

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