Power Consumption Tests

We don?t usually measure the mainboards power consumption, believing naively that the difference between the mainboards from different makers is not going to be too critical. However, in case of Gigabyte P35C-DS3R we decided to make an exception and check it out. Its six-channel processor voltage regulator built with high-frequency transistors dissipates very little heat, which indicates its high efficiency. This gives us hope that this mainboard may prove more efficient from the power consumption standpoint than the competitors.

To be able to make any definite conclusions, we measured the power consumption of systems with similar configurations built on Gigabyte P35C-DS3R and Asus mainboards on Intel P35. We measured the power consumption in idle mode and in burn mode, when the processors were loaded to their maximum with Prime95 utility. Enhanced Intel SpeedStep power-saving technology was enabled.

What a surprise! We did expect Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mainboard to be more economical than Asus solutions, but not that much more economical! Thanks to very thorough design of the processor voltage regulator circuitry and high-quality electronic components Gigabyte P35C-DS3R wins about 20W from Asus boards in idle mode and about 30W under workload! It is a great advantage of this Gigabyte solution as well as all other mainboards in the Ultra Durable 2 series.