ASUS A88X-PRO AMD FM2+ Motherboard Review

System Power Consumption

While performance is important, in today’s world power consumption is also important. With the only difference being the motherboard and processor, we took a look at the power usage of both systems. Using a P3 Kill-A-Watt meter a measurement was taken while the system was idle, sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. A reading was also done during a load test of Heaven run five times.

The ASUS A88X-PRO and FM2 A10-5700 CPU used less power overall than the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 and i5-3570K. While not a huge difference, overtime it could add up to some savings. At idle, there was a 51W difference, almost enough to run two of the AMD systems. At load, there was a 65W difference, once again, more than enough to run a second AMD based system.

Keeping in mind that the power consumption is a factor of all the components, and the A10-5700 is in a totally difference class of processors than the i5-3570K, this should be considered when looking at the power usage between two systems.