Power, Heat, And Efficiency
We manually enable power-saving settings on each board before starting the benchmarks. Although the performance numbers came in very close, we tend to look for the power results to match.
In fact, the power consumption differences appear much larger than the benchmark result deltas.
We expect the most miserly motherboards to also have the lowest temperatures, but this isn't true either. ASRock’s Z87 Extreme4 demonstrates the lowest power consumption and the highest temperatures.
Again, performance differences are minor. MSI’s barely-noticeable losses in a handful of benchmarks nudge its benchmark score to just 1% under average. ASRock’s miniscule overclock likely helps it go 1% over average. Meanwhile, Biostar’s similar 1%-over-average result takes us by surprise.
The reason we show performance on an efficiency page is that it’s an easy way to compare work to energy. In this case, the comparison is work over time, so factoring out the time gives the best-performing boards a slightly larger lead. With a difference in computing time of less than 1% over average for each board, the easiest calculations are probably sufficient.
This chart shows that ASRock’s actual performance lead is roughly equal to its overclock. Still, an average power consumption nearly 11% below the average of all five boards allows its Z87 Extreme4 to take top efficiency honors.
