Test System

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 it. 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. I also measure total system power consumption, allowing you to get an idea of how much power the board and installed devices draw.


Idle power consumption via the 8-pin CPU connector is quite decent. I added in some AMD Dual Graphics numbers here for comparison, but adding the VGA to the system had no effect on power draw through the 8-pin connector. Under load, the AMD A10-5800K can draw a fair bit of power with 85 W total. I noticed that the CPU frequency was pegged at 4.0 GHz on all cores under load and 4.2 GHz on a single core while the other three remained at 4.0 Ghz in idle. CPU speed dropped to 1400 MHz when the OS was truly inactive.


The full system numbers, on the other hand, were pretty impressive to me. The added discrete GPU only added a few watts at idle, but increased a fair bit to 135 W at load; however, seeing the FX chip match the APU's power numbers was a bit unexciting.