Test System

Initial Setup

We found ourselves quite surprised with the ASUS Maximus Gene-Z, as by default, we found that after updating to the most recent BIOS provided to us by ASUS directly, our Intel 2600K performing with an overclock, with all four cores running at 3800 MHz. We cleared the BIOS, the behavior remained, so we had to manually configure the board to get the real defaults of the CPU working. We have to mention though, that all of our testing was performed with ASUS's own defaults of 3800 MHz, as this is the performance level that most users who run "stock" will experience, this is similar to what we've noted in a few instances before, namely with the ZOTAC Z68-ITX WiFi, and the Gigabyte K1.Sniper2 with XMP enabled. We are not sure of what to make of this particular "feature", but as it is something that even our worst 2600K sample is capable of, it shouldn't introduce any stability problems for the majority of users.


And with that said, in the image above you can see that behavior at play. It's worth noting that the voltage reported by CPU-Z here is fairly accurate, and is also a little higher than what our CPU requests under normal Turbo conditions, which is normally 1.174 V.

PWM Power Consumption

Since one of our first tasks was to truly verify system stability, while doing so, we measure CPU power consumption. We isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, as well as 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.


For idle power consumption, the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z performed fairly well, pulling just six watts total, a bit higher than the last Z68-based product we tested from Gigabyte, but still in line with the other Z68 products. Load wattage figures were more impressive, with the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z pulling a few more watts than the Gigabyte G1.Sniper2, but this is more than likely an side-effect of the quad-phase iGPU VRM, double the iGPU-specific phases the Gigabyte board features.