Cooling, Noise, and Power
The last of my testing of the GTX 1070 Gaming X consists of the “uglier” tests. These aren’t as exciting as in game performance, but they are all important to your overall performance and frankly the noise and cooling numbers are normally the main differences between cards from different manufacturers. I started my testing with our power usage testing. This is using a Kill-A-Watt to get the total wattage of our test rig while running Valley Benchmark on loop. I use the peak wattage pulled for the end result. So keep in mind this isn’t the wattage of the GPU itself, it is the entire testbench. With a TDP of 150W compared to the 180W TDP of the GTX 1080 Founders Edition, it’s no surprise the GTX 1070 Gaming X was a little lower than the GTX 1080. The gap was only 21 watts though where the TDP gap is 30 watts. I think this is related to the slight overclock of the MSI card, especially with it running in OC mode.
My next test was checking the peak decibels of the card at both 100% fan speed and 50% fan speed. I run these fan speeds because getting a real world result is inconsistent. Fan speeds are going to vary on both load and temperature. Plus, the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X, like most cards now, turns its fans off at lower power load. So at 100% fan speed the card performed really well. I think this is related to the large fans, they don’t have to run at as high of an RPM to get the same airflow as the smaller fans. The 50% fan speed results were the exact opposite, though. With two fans I think the base noise level is a little higher. Overall the Gaming X sounded much better than the Founders Edition and reference coolers, the reference and FE design has to work really hard to push air across the card and out the back with just one fan.
My last test was testing the cooling capacity of the Twin Frozr IV cooler on the GTX 1070 Gaming X. To do this I tested the peak temperature when looping Valley Benchmark with the stock fan settings and again with the fans turned all the way up to 100%. This gives me a better idea of the cooling performance you can expect out of the box and also the max cooling performance of the card. No big surprises in the stock fan settings results, the giant cooler performed significantly better than the Founders Edition GTX 1080 that has its temperature goal set to 80c. With the fan turned up the Twin Frozr cooler performed even better with an impressive 45 degrees Celsius while under load.
