Gigabyte Z87-D3HP (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

Power Consumption

To test power consumption we monitor the overall power consumption of the system through a socket plug-in electricity usage monitor (aka Killawatt meter). Power consumption is measured at an idle system state whereby the system is allowed to stabilise at the desktop with as few applications running as possible for 5 minutes. The load power consumption is measured during the combined load test of 3DMark11 to simulate a realistic load being placed on all parts of the system. Monitoring system power usage at the wall through a usage meter is the easiest way for us to determine differences in power consumption between different motherboards as we do not have access to the complex and expensive equipment required to measure the motherboards individual power consumption.