Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)

In order to get an idea of a system's maximum power draw, we simultaneously run Prime95 and Unigine Valley 1.0 so as to place full load on the CPU and GPU. We use a watt meter to measure the maximum total system power draw during the test, and also take an idle reading at the Windows desktop (2,560 x 1,440).

Thermal Performance (Idle and Gaming)

Thermal output is also measured using a combination of Prime95 and Unigine's Valley 1.0 benchmark, as the stress of these tests running together will highlight any flaws in a PC's cooling system. After 15 minutes, once temperatures have plateaued, we record the peak CPU temperature using CoreTemp and the peak GPU temperature using GPU-Z, and present the data as the delta T (the difference between the measured temperature and the ambient temperature in our labs). We also take an idle reading at the Windows desktop (2,560 x 1,440).