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.
Load Condition | CPU Voltage | Ring voltage | Idle Power | Load Power |
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Stock Clocks | 1.034 V | 0.868 V | 6W | 68W |
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Overclocked | 1.285 V | 1.150 V | 8W | 129W |
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The MSI Z97I GAMING produced very good power consumption results at both idle and load. I was pretty impressed that its BIOS profiling had my overclock idling as though stock settings were used, which only lead to a slight increase in power consumed, which was most likely due to higher cache and memory speeds. The small 2 W difference between stock and overclocked makes pushing higher CPU speeds where the power is needed a real possibility; it's just a matter of getting a decently clocking "K"-SKU Haswell chip.
Fan Control
Fan control on the MSI Z97I GAMING is pretty good. A fairly intuitive graphical interface in the BIOS provides customizable multi-point fan curves you can independently set for both fan headers, with a range of 12.5% - 100%.