Test System

Initial Setup

With good spacing for larger heatsinks and videocards thanks to the PCIe x1 slot in the uppermost location, setting up the Biostar Hi-Fi Z97WE went without incident; and the front-panel USB 3.0 headers will not interfere with a cooling fan on top of the memory.


The 10-phase VRM design allows the low RDS-on MOSFETs to run fairly cool with just these smaller heatsinks in place, again providing plenty of clearance. Even the SATA ports account for large videocards, slipping under my large GTX 780 nicely because of their right-angled design.


Once inside the OS, I took a CPU-Z screenshot with all the pertinent tabs open, so you can see how the system idled for me. I also took my usual overclocked screenshot with my SuperPi 32m and wPrime test results, shown above. My 4600 MHz overclock is relatively high for a 4770K, but the Biostar Hi-Fi Z97WE had no problems whatsoever pushing these clocks.

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 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 testing environment when compared to a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


The Biostar HiFi Z97WE's power consumption numbers are really good, both at stock and when overclocked, although idle power usage when overclocked was high due to the CPU staying at 4.6 GHz rather than idling in a lower power state. But that is just a matter of changing the option in BIOS, which makes it of no consequence, though this is how the board performs with only minimal changes to the BIOS itself, other than to the multipliers and voltages used.