As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). MSI’s idle power consumption numbers are nice and low, although this could potentially be pushed down further with Eco Center.ĭifferent motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency.
This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single MSI GTX 770 Lightning GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply.