TEMPERATURE & 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.
Different specs again weighing in heavily in our test results. This time around, the lack of any of our mechanical drives and case fans along with the different PSU totally gives off a whole different feel to our results graph. Still, we serve the information for reference. The same goes for temperatures.
Moving on, we here at Back2Gaming are obsessed with power conservation and if there’s anything we can do to drop our power-usage, we will. Undervolting is rarely discussed here but we’ll take the time to shed some light on this matter. Contrary to overclocking, our undervolting methodology has us reducing the voltage to sustain the stock speeds of the processor.
We’ve always had very impressive undervolting results using MSI motherboards and the Z77 Mpower is no exception. Dropping to 0.980v, the system consumes no more than 120W during Prime95 SmallFFT compared to 139w on stock settings. Very nice drop, possibly an i5 would likely show much more interesting sub-100w results. Undervolting also does wonders for the temperatures, peaking at only 57*C on the hottest core and averaging at 49*C.