ASUS Energy Processing Unit
With the focus now shifting towards making more energy-efficient products, motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS and Gigabyte have come up with technologies to keep power consumption (and heat output) down. ASUS names their technology the Energy Processing Unit (EPU) while Gigabyte calls theirs the Dynamic Energy Saver (DES).
According to ASUS, the "ASUS EPU utilizes innovative technology to digitally monitor and fine-tune the CPU power supply with improved VR responses in heavy or light loadings. Working together with AI Gear 3+, it automatically provides power for higher performance or improves efficiency by 50% when the PC is running low intensity applications - helping you attain the best possible power efficiency and energy savings of up to 80.23% to help save the environment".
In the next few pages or so, we will be sharing with you our findings on EPU. First and foremost, the EPU functionality is not enabled by default. EPU functionality is tied with ASUS AI Gear 3+ power management software. AI Gear 3+ is part of ASUS' AI Suite and the suite needs to be installed first before we can start playing with EPU.
Before we get started, here are the parts used for our test setup:
Test Setup 1
- Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 / Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 / Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
- Asus P5E3 Premium
- Aeneon 1333MHz DDR3 2GB kit
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA
- Zotac GeForce 8400 GS 256MB
- FSP Everest 80plus 600w PSU
Test Setup 2
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 / Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
- Asus P5E3 Premium
- Aeneon 1333MHz DDR3 2GB kit
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA
- XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB Black Edition
- FSP Everest 80plus 600w PSU
