We performed our power consumption measurements using the same Extech Power Analyzer 380803. This device is connected before the PSU and measures the power draw of the entire system (without the monitor), including the power loss that occurs in the PSU itself. In the idle mode we start the system up and wait until it stops accessing the hard disk. The power consumption in case of single-threaded CPU load is measured while running the Pi-digits performance test, and in case of multi-threaded load – while running the Fritz Chess Benchmark test. We also used Hitman Absolution game to create complex load. The results on the diagrams are sorted out in ascending order and the results of Asus P8Z77-V are highlighted with darker color for your convenience.
It is one of the advantages of the P8Z77-V mainboard that CPU-related power-saving technologies work correctly on it and are turned on by default. You don’t have to manually enable them. However, the power consumption of this model isn’t low. It is comparable to that of the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H and higher in comparison with the economical ASUS P8Z77-V LK and MSI Z77 MPOWER.
The ASUS P8Z77-V needs much less power than the flagship models from ASRock and ASUS but their power requirements are not typical of ordinary products because they have an additional PCI Express switch.
Now let’s compare how much power the systems need when overclocked.
The results get closer to each other. The ASUS P8Z77-V expectedly needs less power than the two special models but its power draw is higher compared to the ASUS P8Z77-V LK and MSI Z77 MPOWER.