GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 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 the power supplies, case fans, video cards and hard drives. 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 was run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum power consumption and heat. We also ran Furmark 1.8 at 1280×1024 to put a full load on the graphics card. All systems were tested using identical hardware.

Power consumption of the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 motherboard fell between our other Intel X58 boards. Total power consumption was 484 Watts at the wall, while our highest consuming Intel X58 Motherboard had a total power consumption of 502 Watts and the lowest was 457 Watts. Idle consumption has similar results with the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 falling at the halfway point between the ASUS Sabertooth X58 and the MSI Big Bang XPower X58 motherboard.