ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Our voltage regulation testing will focus on the various voltages and the differences encountered between what is selected in the BIOS and what is measured by a digital multi-meter (DMM). Thanks to the ProbeIt feature we didn't have to go poking & prodding everywhere, since all the voltage read points are located in one convenient spot. The concept is pretty simple, the left dot is the ground point, the right point is the voltage read point. Touch your DMM leads to whichever voltage you want to check and voila! As mentioned previously though, we would have prefered a design where you could attach the DMM leads to the read points, since it's a pain in the backside to be standing over the motherboard gently keeping the leads on the small dots for any length of time.

Voltage Regulation

These measurements were taken at stock system speeds and with C1E, SpeedStep, Turbo Boost, and Thermal Monitor disabled in the BIOS. Just to clarify, the vCore (LLC) section is the vCore results with Load-Line Calibration enabled. Here are our findings:


These results are very, very impressive. The Maximus III Formula has some of the best voltage output and regulation that we have seen on any motherboard. What you select in the BIOS is exactly what the motherboards outputs and there is effectively no variance between idle and load states. Having said that, the VTT/IMC voltage outputs a little higher than selected and even boosts a bit higher under load. However, given how important this voltage is, we're more than happy to see this little divergence.

The most noteworthy voltage is obviously the vCore, and not only is accurate but exceptionally stable as well. As you can see from our results, the MIIIF clearly has Load-Line Calibration (LLC) enabled by default, so you can simply leave the setting on AUTO and LLC will be engaged. The exception to this is when the vCore is set to auto and Load-Line Calibration (LLC) is also set to auto, where you get a roughly 5% voltage droop, as per Intel's specifications. Given how critical it is, let's take a closer look at the vCore's characteristics under full load with a one-hour OCCT run, while our Core i7-870 is overclocked to 4.0Ghz at 1.35Vcore with LLC on AUTO:


Usually, we would have two vCore charts above, one with Load-Line Calibration enabled and one with it disabled. However, as mentioned above, as soon as you manually select the CPU core voltage LLC gets enabled automatically. Therefore, unless a user manually disables it (and there's no reason to), this is what the vCore line will look like. As you can see, for some reason LLC takes a little while to kick into gear, but once it does the vCore line is absolutely perfect, showing no spikes or ripples. Clearly, the Maximus III Formula's 16+3 phase PWM design is a good one.

Power Consumption

All motherboard manufacturers boast that their products have the lowest power consumption and feature the latest new development in energy efficiency. Well that is what we are here to find out.

For this test, every BIOS option was reset to its default setting and the Windows Vista power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced. Lastly, we set the ASUS EPU-6 Engine to AUTO mode to allow it to fully manage system power consumption. We also tan this test without EPU being installed on the system, to see what the difference would be.

For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter.

For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter.

For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, while simultaneously loading the GPU with OCCT v3.1.0 GPU:OCCT stress test at 1680x1050@60Hz in fullscreen mode.


In bone stock form, the Maximus III Formula power efficiency was middle of the road. While it matched the impressive MSI P55-GD80 when it came to idle, it had the same high (within context) CPU load power consumption as the P7P55D Deluxe. Thankfully, it proved to have slightly lower full load power consumption than its ASUS brethren. Frankly though, this is an enthusiast product, power consumption be damned!