Temperature and Power Consumption
We check to see how motherboard makers tune their default BIOS settings and see how it impacts temperatures and power consumption. The system is left to idle for 30 minutes before readings are taken and load data is taken 30 minutes while Prime95 blend test is running. Power readings are taken for the entire system from the socket.
[singlepic id=13225 w=600 h=600 float=center] [singlepic id=13230 w=600 h=600 float=center]The MSI 970A-G43 is a heavy hit and miss in this segment as the BIOS is dialed-in to go as low as 0.95v giving us lovely idle temps and power consumption but when the torture comes in, the system reaches up past 200w and the temps follow-suit.
We don’t see the lack of heatsink solution in the VRM are as problem but the northbridge tends to heat-up a lot and we’d have really loved a larger heatsink in this area to counter this scenario.
