iBUYPOWER Erebus GT Gaming System Review

Name: iBUYPOWER Erebus GT
Brand: iBUYPOWER

by Seth Colaner — Thursday, March 29, 2012, 10:00 AM EDT

Power Consumption

Page 8: Power Consumption

Before bringing this article to a close, we'll take a look at power consumption of the Erebus GT versus the other systems we tested. We let each system boot and sit idle before measuring idle power and then loaded down each system with both an instance of Prime95 (to load down the CPU) and Furmark (to load the GPU) before taking our full load power consumption measurements. Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling on the desktop and while under a heavy workload. Keep in mind, this is total system power consumption being measured at the outlet.

Power consumption is sometimes the other side of the coin with a high-performing system, and we do see that at idle, those other systems are looking mighty fine. Compared to the Erebus GT’s 90W, the next-highest power draw was the other iBUYPOWER system at 71W. The HP and Dell systems, by contrast, pulled far less.

Under load, however, the delta shrinks considerably; in fact, the Erebus GT actually drank less juice in this state than the other iBUYPOWER system.

Fan noise is a small issue; the fans really never turn off, emitting a non stop breezy hum, but the plus side is that even when under a full load, the sound never increases. If you’re a stickler for noise, this may bug you somewhat, but you can’t complain much about a system that runs quietly while shredding FPSes the way this system does.