Testing (continued):
The final phase of testing was to take a look at the power consumption. As mentioned at the beginning of the review, some of the key selling points of the P5K PRO are its 'green' features like eight phase power and EPU. The screenshots below are taken from the portion of the AI Gear3 software that is responsible for adjusting the power profile of the system. You shift gears like in a car (there is also an automatic mode for those who can't drive stick), brief descriptions tell you what to expect, and then a small icon in the taskbar pops up a balloon to confirm the current power consumption of the CPU.
  
While the software worked well when using the "High Performance", "Medium Performance", and "Auto" modes, I found it to be rather buggy when trying to ramp things all the way up or all the way down. If I tried to use "Turbo" mode designed for high end gaming, or "Maximum Power Savings" mode designed for low power tasks like watching DVDs, the system would lock up and instantly reboot.
While the software indicates that the power to the CPU was being cut by up to 60% when shifting to lower power modes, I was more interested in total power savings. The CPU is just a small portion of total system power consumption, so a Seasonic Power Angel was used to monitor the AC power draw of the whole computer.
The chart below shows the idle and load results for the P5KC, as well as the P5K PRO as monitored in a variety of configurations. The idle conditions were established by leaving the system and the Windows desktop for 15 minutes with nothing running, while the load condition was established by running 3DMark06.
As the information above reveals, even without using EPU, the P5KC uses 25% more power at idle. Shift the P5K PRO down to Medium Performance mode and the P5KC is about 51% higher. If you happen to leave your computer on when not in use, this could translate into a big savings on your electric bill. AI Nap is something similar to hibernation, but for some reason more power is being consumed, despite the computer being no longer usable. I pay about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which means running this setup at idle on the P5KC costs about 54 cents per day. Switching to the P5K PRO without using EPU drops this to about 43 cents per day, and letting it run in Medium Performance mode gets you all the way down to about 36 cents per day. While that is great, if you happen to leave your computer idling all the time I might suggest putting it to good use by running Folding@Home. While some cost saving benefits will be lost, your system will be doing something worthwhile.
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