Sound Card

Test Setup

• Intel Core i7-870
  
• Asus Maximus III Extreme (P55, 0309 BIOS)
  
• 4GB OCZ DDR3 PC3-15000 / 1,866MHz / Platinum Edition @ SPD: 1,333MHz, CL7
  
• 650W Seasonic X-Series PSU
  
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
  
• ATI Catalyst 10.1 WHQL
  
• Windows 7 Home Premium x64

We whipped out an Auzentech Forte 7.1 x1 PCI-E soundcard and compared it to the playback of the onboard 'VIA 2020' audio on the Asus Maxmius III Extreme motherboard. The onboard audio was disabled in the BIOS when testing the PCI-E x1 soundcard. We played back a HD trailer with DTS 5.1 sound from the hard disk, so while the additional power use from the hard disk is a factor, it was uniform between both tests.


The idle power of the onboard audio is significantly lower than the Auzentech soundcard at 17W, although under load that gap narrows to just 7W, probably because the offset of the fewer onboard components is that it requires additional CPU processing rather than a more self-contained solution like the Forte 7.1.

Network Card

Despite having a 400MHz PowerPC processor, the Killer Nic Zeno Pro only requires a few watts more than the onboard Realtek x1 PCI-E chip when copying data from the Gigabit network. We realise that the Killer NIC offers additional features on top of this; however as a basic network tool there's not a great deal in it.

Fans

Adding extra quiet fans to your system requires next to no power resources. We show 1W here but in reality it averaged less. We also found that there was no difference between 80 and 120mm fans of our recommended Sharkoon Silent Eagle, and testing other 120mm's we had in our lab also required just a single watt or less of power. In comparison, performance (and arguably ridiculous) fans like the Vantec Tornado require 12W! No sane person will run one of these though, however for watercoolers you might like to know that your DDC will require 19W at full pelt: a great deal more than air-cooling.