Motherboard Chipset power consumption, what do we know?

[janas19]

Why isn't there much information about how chipset power consumption varies between motherboards? For example, Intel B150 has support for 12 USB ports and 8 PCIe lanes, and Intel Z170 supports 14 USB ports and 20 PCIe lanes. It seems the less features a motherboard enables, the less power it consumes. As evidence of this, MSI made an "Eco" series of motherboards a few years ago. They claim power savings up to 40% by disabling motherboard features not being used. MSI H110M Eco Specs

With MS ECO Center Pro you can physically cut the power to unused chips to save up to 40% power usage.

In addition, motherboard manufacturers such as Gigabyte and ASUS offer "power savings" modes that can be selected in the BIOS. Some motherboards even have digital PWM ICs for real-time watt meters. Eg, Gigabyte Aorus Z370 Specs

AORUS Z370 series motherboards use an all digital CPU power design which includes both digital PWM Controllers and Smart Power Stage controllers.

My question to the community is this: with the push to implement power efficient DC-ATX PSUs, how much do we know about power consumption by motherboards? Is there any granularity to designing a SFF build on these qualities, or is it just "one size fits all"?

 

[Valantar]

Why isn't there much information about how chipset power consumption varies between motherboards? For example, Intel B150 has support for 12 USB ports and 8 PCIe lanes, and Intel Z170 supports 14 USB ports and 20 PCIe lanes. It seems the less features a motherboard enables, the less power it consumes. As evidence of this, MSI made an "Eco" series of motherboards a few years ago. They claim power savings up to 40% by disabling motherboard features not being used. MSI H110M Eco Specs



In addition, motherboard manufacturers such as Gigabyte and ASUS offer "power savings" modes that can be selected in the BIOS. Some motherboards even have digital PWM ICs for real-time watt meters. Eg, Gigabyte Aorus Z370 Specs



My question to the community is this: with the push to implement power efficient DC-ATX PSUs, how much do we know about power consumption by motherboards? Is there any granularity to designing a SFF build on these qualities, or is it just "one size fits all"?

Generally the power draw of a motherboard is small enough to not matter much - you can likely save 5-10W on a moderately feature rich board by disabling controllers and so on, but ITX boards are usually quite stripped down already, and there's thus not much to save. Disabling features you don't need will still save you something, but likely not much. There's almost always more savings to be had by undervolting your CPU or GPU, which also has benefits for cooling. And if 5-10W is necessary to keep your PSU stable, for example, you're pushing it a bit too far.

 

[CottonTexas]

This is a keen interest of mine since I'm building for a mobile PC, and when power is a finite source, every little bit counts. I found THIS LINK a while back, and it's what I used to decide that I was going with the ASUS B360i - and now that I've already bought it, I'm kinda hoping that no one replies with: "Yeah, I just got my Brand-X Z390 to power up using an onion!"

I don't mess around in the BIOS, so I can't speak of under-volting/clocking etc. Though I find it interesting, I've had too many friends break things that I could never afford when they were trying to learn.