Cooling, Noise, and Power

The first set of tests that I ran the R7 260X through is always the most interesting. In our noise and cooling tests we sometimes see higher end cards that perform cooler than low end cards that should generate less heat and the sometimes it’s the other way around with high end cards being noisy or much warmer. So If the budget friendly 260X has any chance of outperforming the high dollar cards it is in this set of benchmarks. To start things off I ran our power consumption benchmark that checks both idle and peak in game power usage of our entire test bench with the specific card. In this card the 260X came in down near the bottom of our chart meaning its power consumption is extremely low. This was down in with the 650 Ti boost and the HD 7790s that share the same architecture as the 260X with the exception of a slightly faster clock speed.

In noise testing the 260X was a great example of what I mean where anything can happen. This time it came in at the middle of our charts just above a high end GTX 780. The higher noise output is most likely related to the single fan design that has to work at a higher RPM in order to be able to keep things cool where a two or three fan design can get the same amount of air flow at a much lower RPM.

Once again the 260X came in at the middle of the charts in our cooling benchmark. As I mentioned before this is related to its single fan design that just can’t keep up with some of the more extravagant cooling designs of more expensive video cards. At 70 degree at peak this is still noticeably lower than any reference card we have tested though, so I wouldn’t be to upset at the results.