ASRock Core 100HT Home Theater PC Review

Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple
power consumption tests on our test beds. To measure
idle usage, we ran the system at idle for one hour on the desktop with
no screen saver and took the measurement. For the NAS Download test, we ran a file copy of a Blu-Ray ISO from our NAS to the ASRock Core 100HT. The YouTube HD power consumption numbers were taken while playing
the 720p trailer of Thor from YouTube. Lastly, the 3DMark Vantage power consumption numbers were taken while running Test 1.

The power consumption numbers of the ASRock Core 100HT may surprise you if you haven’t seen how efficient the TDP of Intel’s Core i processor line is until now. One could even lower these numbers further if they used and SSD instead of an HDD storage drive. As we saw in our Sandy Bridge mobile article, Intel’s latest generation is even more efficient and shows how little power today’s high end processors can be at idle. The ASRock Core 100HT system never got above 41 watts during our testing and that was during a gaming test of 3DMark Vantage, and many will never play such a demanding game on this system. So many purchasing this system will likely never break 40 watts with this system, which is great for a home theater PC that is always powered on.