Hi all,

Anyone got a DH77EB or DH77DF that they can measure with killawatt? I'm curious which one is better in terms of power efficiency/low energy usage.

Thanks,
Pressingonalways

I recently built a system with a DH77EB and i5-3570K. Here are my kill-a-watt measurements:



For a pretty beefy machine, the idle stats are quite amazing.

I've build the mini pc with these components:
Motherboard: DH77DF
Processor: I5-3470S
Ram: 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile White, 1.35V @1600Mhz 9-9-9-24
SSD: Plextor M3 128GB
Power supply: MeanWell GS90A12-P1M + pico psu 90-XLP
Fan: Intel stock fan + Arctic Cooling F8-PWM on the case.
OS: windows 7 ultimate x64

I've disabled the Turbo mode of the core I5 to limit the maximum power consumption under load and I've activated all the C-states. I've also set the power policy in the bios on low power and I've checked in windows device manager the box that says "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" on the firewire controller.
I've measured a power consumption under load (with prime95 + furmark) of 72W (about 80W with the turbo activated).
The idle power consumption, when the fans are connected, is measured with the minimum allowed rotation speed (it's more than enough keep cool the system @idle). The minimum rotation speed of the stock intel fan is 1000rpm and the artic cooling fan is 350rpm. No keyboard nor mouse are connected during the tests.
Here the results:

With gigabit connected, video output enabled, fan processor connected, fan case connected:
11W
With gigabit connected, no video output, fan processor connected, fan case connected:
9.8W
With gigabit connected, no video output, fan processor connected, fan case disconnected:
9.6W
With gigabit connected, no video output, fan processor disconnected, fan case disconnected:
8.8W

Without the gigabit lan connected the power consumption falls by about 0.6W.

I'm very impressed by the results and I'm very happy of this system. Now I've a lot of power with idle power consumption way lower than the old AMD E350 system based on the asus E35M1-deluxe (the idle power consumption with the same pico-psu and adapter was about 16W).

Thanks for the report! Very encouraging...

But could you state how you measured those values? It's an important detail for those who are interested in how your results compare with hardware of the same class. It's not a surprise it consumes less than an Asus board but the actual values are surprising (to me anyway).
Since you didn't state your location, your mains voltage and ambient temperature could be useful as well.

Also, do you know what the BIOS "power policy" actually does?

The chip set on the new Haswell CPU will use half the wattage of the Ivy Bridge chipset:
viewtopic.php?p=562561#p562561

The main voltage here in Switzerland is 230V, the ambient temperature was about 26°C. To measure the power consumption I've used this power meter:
http://www.gt-support.de/files/IM_GT-PM-04_D.pdf



Unfortunately I don't know what the power policy in the bios does, I've also not noted any difference in the idle power consumption between "low power" and "high performance".

I've also enabled the DIPM for the disk (by default only the HIPM was enabled), but I've not checked if this make any measurable difference in the power consumption.
In the configuration of the system during the measurement there was also a sony slim DVD writer (AD-7713H-01). It adds about 0.1-0.2W in the total power consumption.

I'm deciding between these two too.
I'll probably use the pentium G630T cpu (a dual core 35W sandy bridge)

when you do get it, please be sure to post your wattage readings here. Always interested to see how low it can get.

dh77df, i3-3225, PicoPSU-120-WI-25, 2x4GB ddr3 corsair CMX8GX3M2A1333C9, 24GB mSATA A-DATA Premier Pro SP300 SSD, WD RED 3TB, 19V FSP 120AAC ac/dc brick, two 700RPM fans
30-40W during boot, 19W idle (with WD RED spinning) not including the losses on the ac/dc brick (I'm measuring the DC current on the pico psu)
16.5W idle in video standby, 54.4W burn (mprime, red eclipse)

without the WD RED: 13.7W idle (12.9W in video standby), 50W burn (mprime, red eclipse)

I can confirm that the DH77DF is a phenomenal low-power board. I have it paired with an i3-3220T+stock HSF, a Crucial 512GB m4 SSD, a 2GB 1.5V DDR3 DIMM, a picoPSU-150-XT, and a Meanwell GS60A12-P1J. I updated to the latest BIOS, and in the BIOS power settings set it to custom and pretty much enabled all low power settings. I also disabled the Sound and IEEE 1394 since I'm using it as a NAS. I'm using the latest drivers for chipset, video, LAN, etc.

With HDMI video output, keyboard+mouse connected, GbE LAN connected = 11W (idle)
No video output, no keyboard+mouse, and GbE LAN connected = 8W - 9W (idle)

I'd like to get a lower-voltage DIMM, and I'm sure I could shave another 1W if I went with an SSD (or USB flash) that had a very low idle power.