Power Consumption and Temperatures

For the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial, one probe is placed along each bank of power stages. A probe is left out to log the ambient temperature. For temperature measurement, I use a Reed SD-947 4 channel Data Logging Thermometer paired with four Omega Engineering SA1 self adhesive thermocouple probes. All temperatures are presented as Delta-T which is the recorded temperature minus the ambient temperature as a base. The end result accounts for variation in ambient temperature, including changes over the course of a test.

Prime95 is used for maximum power consumption over a 30 minute period. For testing, I used an Intel Core i7-12700K set to 5.0 GHz and locked at 1.35 V. Other tests are conducted with an Intel Core i9-12900K in its stock configurations. Temperatures are logged every second, and the two probes are then averaged for a cleaner presentation before subtracting the ambient to calculate the Delta-T. The results are charted below.


These VRM tests are split into multiple charts for a wider understanding of the abilities of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial cooling solution. Prime95 is in many ways designed to be a brutal torture test. It is a fairly unrealistic daily use case. That being said, these results are fantastic. A 320 watt power draw from the CPU and the VRM temperature bounced off 50°C as it reached equilibrium 7 minutes into the test. Only going up and down as the CPU reached the thermal limit of 100°C.


Even though one test was enough to illustrate how effective a monoblock can be, this represents a more real-world test load scenario. Unsurprisingly the monoblock did exceptionally well and flatlined only after 5 minutes.


The final test was to see how the VRM heatsink may fare in games. It is interesting to see similar thermal loads as the highest stress tests even though the CPU is drawing about half the power. These three graphs show that at no point in time should anyone be concern with the monoblocks VRM cooling capabilities.