Power consumption

And last, another look at power consumption.  Just like in the first article, these measurements were taken at the wall.  This means that you have to factor in the inefficiencies of the PSU. In other words, the numbers you are looking at below should be reduced by 15-20% to estimate the actual power the system is using.

So the very worst case scenario (game test) for me, with the quad core CPU installed, was Batman maxing at 397W AC.  Multiply by 0.85 to estimate the actual system power consumption and you’d find it was only 338W, more than 100W less than this power supply’s rating.

Maximum A/C power draw during testing

WOW….I was really taken aback when I first saw the results graphed out like this.  I was expecting the quad core CPU to always have a higher power draw….but in real world gaming, the quad really doesn’t need any more power than the dual core CPU with these settings.  The quad only hit a higher peak power draw in 9 out of the 17 tests.  That’s pretty encouraging for users concerned about the lower power rating this power supply has.  The other thing, is that just like in my first article, it would appear that we have plenty of power for general use of this machine.  The other obvious thing I learned from this graph is that I believe the 5870 wouldn’t have had any problem working with the 300W stock PSU from the first review.

Conclusions

Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3

This board continues to impress me.  It’s a very solid piece of work, well done Gigabyte.  I would, however, be a bit more hesitant to recommend this board for a power user planning to run a quad core CPU.  The boards OCP circuit does put a bit of a limit on the overclocking potential.  But if that is the price we much pay for reliability and small form factor, I suppose that’s reasonable. Especially considering I was still able to get the quad core up to 4GHz+, most people would probably still be very satisfied with these results.  To be able to pack this much power into such a small space is truly impressive!

As my second look at this motherboard, I feel it has truly earned my enthusiastic recommendation.  As the basis for a SFF powerhouse, this is THE board to choose.  For overclocking dual core CPUs it can almost keep up with it’s big brothers, and while not flawless with a quad core, it truly is impressive for it’s size.  Without hesitation I give this board the TechREACTION Gold Silicon Award!

The Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 receives the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

Corsair H70
I’ve only had a short time with this cooler, but in that amount of time it has genuinely impressed me.  I believe this may be the cooler of choice for SFF builds now, and for some time to come.  In a tower build, there may be good air coolers which rival this in this price/performance metric.  But I’m confident there is not a single air cooler which I could fit into this build that could come anywhere close to the performance of the H70.  Well done Corsair!  Having said that, I am planning a more thorough review of the H70 and I’ll reserve final judgment until that is complete.

Corsair Dominator GTX3 – DDR3-2400
I did not go into detail about this memory and it’s performance in this review, but I was surprised on multiple occasions by the speeds that I was able to run this memory stable at.  DDR3-2100 with 6-9-6-27 1T timings is very impressive, and to me it’s even more impressive than the stock speeds and timings.  Unfortunately, I was unable to compare the stock speeds/timings because of the poor overclocking performance of this CPU which unfortunately runs into a soft bclock wall between 212MHz and 220MHz.  So I was forced to run the tightest timings I could at more earthly bclock rates, and for this task, the memory was very impressive.

I have not performed extensive memory testing, but I was gauging my expectations based on Hokiealumnus’ series of fast DDR3 reviews.  Looking at the most recent article,  towards the bottom in the overclocking section he talks about the memory’s tightest possible timings at DDR3-2000 frequencies.  He’s compared 5 kits so far, and none of them have been able to run as tight at DDR3-2000 as these Dominators ran at DDR3-2100! Not only that, but he was only concerned with the kits he tested passing three fairly easy benchmarks; SuperPI 1M, wPrime 32M, and MAXMEM.  These Corsair DIMMs I used running at DDR3-2100 6-7-6-27 1T had to be memtest86+ stable, LinX stable, and I even tested SuperPI 32M, which is one of the most strenuous memory tests I know of.

Dominator GTX3 memory is SuperPI 32M stable

Just like with the H70, I’m working on a more thorough review of these DIMMs, so I will reserve my final judgment until the testing has been completed.

Final Words

Overall I’m pretty happy with the system in its current form.  Based on the temperatures of the quad core, I think I could probably switch back to air cooling and have similar results, but the lower temps are pretty cool (no pun intended).  I will be leaving the quad core CPU installed as opposed to the dual core, particularly because it transforms GTA IV into a much better experience and doesn’t have any real downsides.  I might do a bit more testing with the HD5870 before I lock in the final configuration, but I think I’ll most likely stick with the GTX 480 for PhysX support.

If you’re interested in continuing to follow my build, please follow my build log here.

Once again, thank you for stopping by and be sure to visit us here at TechREACTION regularly for more great content.  I’ll be working hard over the next week or two to finish up the H70 and GTX3 reviews.

I’d like to thank Gigabyte again for supplying the motherboard used in this review….keep up the great work Gigabyte!

I’d also like to thank Corsair for supplying the H70 cooler and the GTX3 DIMMs used in this review!

If you have any comments or criticisms, please feel free to post below, or stop by our forums and join out blossoming community there.

Update (Sept. 6th 2010)

I finished the build last night, if you’re interested in the finished product, here it is…the pictures include the XBOX360 controller for size reference, and because the colors match nicely.  I use the controller for FUEL, GRID, DiRT 2, ToCA Race Driver 3, and Grand Theft Auto IV (driving only).

MAX11L – finished 1

MAX11L – finished 2

MAX11L – finished 3

MAX11L – finished 4

MAX11L – finished 5

MAX11L – finished 6

MAX11L – finished 7

MAX11L – finished 8

Lastly, you can check out screenshots from all of the testing on the final page… >>

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