System Power Consumption
Another area I was keen to look at comes down to total system power consumption, as each result only has one changing variable which is the board itself, so it’s easy to see what kind of difference it can make when choosing what board is right for you.
As expected, at idle, the mini-ITX board uses the least amount of power with our system sitting at 78 Watts, while the Crosshair Extreme system used the most at 121 Watts idle. As we put the systems through a Prime95 run, the Crosshair stays at the top of our stack at 291 Watts, while the E Gaming comes in the most efficient at 271 Watts. Typically speaking, the higher-end boards do require more power, though Gigabyte’s AORUS boards stand out here as they actually use around 10 to 15 Watts less power compared to the competition.
