GIGABYTE G1.SNIPER2 Intel Z68 Motherboard Review

System Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with identical power supplies, Solid-Sate Drives, Memory kits and motherboards from the same company. 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 load measurements, Prime95’s in-place large FFT’s were run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum power consumption and heat. Curious about other test scenarios, we decided to 3DMark Vantage the performance preset and took the maximum power consumption during the first GPU test.

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2 was for the most part, comparable to the system power consumption of the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z. Though across all of our tests the consumption was lower. Sitting idle the G1 Sniper 2 pulled 96 Watts while the ASUS ROG Maximus IV Extreme-Z sat at an even 100 Watts and the Gene-Z sat next to them sipping power at only 80 Watts. Loading up the Intel Core i5 2500K with Prime95 Large FFT’s the Sniper 2 started pulling 154 Watts while the Extreme-Z pulled 154 Watts and the Gene-Z continued to pull less with only 148 Watts. Firing up 3DMark 11 the order remained the same. The Sniper 2 sat in the middle of the chart pulling 224 Watts, the Extreme-Z at 232 Watts and the Gene-Z pulling 200 Watts.