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Power And Temperature
I finally get something to talk about, though maybe not so much. The Pro4 is neither the highest nor the lowest when it comes to power consumption. The temperature charts don't tell us much, considering the vast differences between the Pro4 and the ITX boards. However, remember the H81M-HDS, the last 4-phase VRM ASRock board I tested, had a VRM at 28.6 degrees Celsius over ambient while drawing 55.5W doing its Prime95 run. The Pro4's VRM is 30 percent cooler than the HDS, even though it's running four times as many threads and using 258 percent more power! The HDS also had a down-draft cooler so it had better airflow over the VRM. Take note, motherboard manufacturers: If you want to market a board as an overclocking candidate, even an inexpensive sleeper board, a VRM heatsink goes a long way.