ASRock Z170 OC Formula Motherboard Review

Temperature and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

Using a P3 Kill-A-Watt we monitored the power usage of the ASRock Z170 OC Formula system during our testing and made note of the lowest and highest readings.

Legit Bottom Line: The ASRock Z170 OC Formula was using a tiny 2W more power than the other Z170 motherboard we have tested at Idle conditions. Once we started gaming though the ASRock Z170 OC Formula was found to be using 5W less than the other Z170 motherboard. Not a big difference in power usage either way. Of course overclocking the Z170 OC Formula the Idle and Load power usage went up a bit, 12W during Idle testing, and 39W while gaming. Not bad overall.

Temperature

To monitor the temperature of the CPU, we used CPUID Hardware Monitor 1.28. It tracked the Minimum and Maximum temperatures for all four cores, which was then averaged. The Idle condition temperature was done by allowing the system to sit at the desktop with no applications running. For the Load temperature score, we ran through all the various benchmarks included in this review, and played a couple of games for an hour. The ambient temperature in the room was kept at 21C (70F).

Legit Bottom Line: Temperature wise, both Z170 motherboards we tested received pretty much the identical temperature readings throughout testing. While overclocked though, the Z170 OC Formula averaged over 90C while gaming, that is pretty high, and wouldn’t recommend keeping it there for long term gaming.