Z77 Motherboard Round-Up: MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, Intel

Name: Intel Z77 Chipset
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Sunday, April 08, 2012, 12:01 AM EDT

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd also like to take a but about power consumption. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power each of our Z77 Express-based test system was consuming with a power meter, and compared them to the reference systems used throughout our benchmark tests.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling at the Windows desktop and while under a heavy CPU workload. Keep in mind, this is total system power consumption being measured at the outlet and not the the individual power cnsumption of the motherboards alone.

The power consumption characteristics of each of the Z77 Express-based motherbaords we tested were quite different. The MSI Z77A-GD65 proved to consume the least amount of power of the bunch, under both idle and load conditions. Next came the Asus board, followed by Gigabyte's offering. Intel's DZ77A-70K consumed more power than all three, however. We've reached out to Intel in hopes of finding a clear answer as to why their board would consume more power than partner boards that have more intergrated peripherals (it's likely due to slight voltage differences), but haven't heard back just yet.

Tags: Intel, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Motherboard, Socket 1155, Z77

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com