Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than that, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several other applications to do so, but merely to provide repeatable power draw numbers anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. It provides similar results in my test environment when compared with a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


The ASUS MAXIMUS VII HERO performed admirably under load, but idle power consumption was a bit higher than expected. This is par for the course with gaming and overclocking boards and merely amounts to 10W or so, a minor difference most users will not quibble over.

Fan Control

One of the biggest changes ASUS offers in the wake of Intel Z97-based products is an excellent fan-control design that surpasses anything I have seen before. Simply run the software ASUS provides in the OS or use the profiler in BIOS to tune fan settings to their limits, both from a dead stop to maximum RPM. Options such as silent or to full speed become available after finding out where those limits are for each fan. You can also manually adjust each fan curve individually, which allows for a completely customized cooling set-up. Not only does ASUS offer this function to the main CPU fan header, but EVERY SINGLE FAN header works this way, so go ahead and throw that 5-port fan header away for good.