Cooling, Noise, and Power
The last set of testing focuses on some of the performance aspects that people forget about when looking for a new video card. For example, I take a look at power usage to get an idea if you will need to run a bigger power supply. I also test the cooler for both cooling performance and noise to see what manufacturer and model is going to best fit your build. The cooling tests specifically are sometimes the only big difference that manufacturers can make to get their card to stand out other than just overclocking. In today's case, it’s a great look at the range of MSI’s cards on the same chipset.
So for power usage testing I monitor the total wattage of the entire testbench using a Kill-a-Watt and document the highest wattage pulled while running through Valley Benchmark. In the case of the GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X, I saw 147 watts. This was 14 watts higher than the less overclocked GTX 1050 Ti from MSI. This shows us that with the addition of the 6-pin power connection MSI has turned up the voltage slightly to handle that higher overclock. The addition of a second fan might also account for a little bit of that as well, but honestly, the fans on the Gaming X don’t even turn on through most of the test but I will get to that here shortly.
For noise testing, I test on our open test bench with our meter just past the motherboard. This leads to higher than normal numbers, well higher than you would ever experience day to day but due to the noise levels in and around our office this setup leads to the most repeatable results. That said the Gaming X with its two large fans came in in the middle of our charts overall and it was a little over one decibel higher than the smaller MSI. This was a surprise because the smaller cards had a noticeable fan noise where this card seemed quieter to the ear. This goes to show you though that decibels are only part of the answer, different tones can be a lot more noticeable than others. Because of this, I wouldn’t label the card as noisy like I did with the others, in fact it seemed quiet compared to most cards I have tested recently.
Okay, the last batch of testing is taking a look at the cards cooling performance by testing peak temperatures while looping through Valley benchmark. I did this test twice, once with the stock fan settings a second time with the fans turned up to 100% fan speed. I do this to get a look at the out of the box performance and what most people should expect then I take a look at what the cooler is capable of if noise isn’t an issue. The stock settings came out good with the card basically running in line with the GTX 1070 Gaming X I tested a while back. This was still two degrees higher than the lower overclocked GTX 1050 Ti, though. I actually think this is related to the silent functionality of the card where it turns the fans off until they are needed. Because the 1050 Ti doesn’t put out a lot of heat and because the heatsink on this card is large the fans actually didn’t come on for a while. By the time they do the temps end up a little higher than if the fans were on all the time. The 100% fan speed test was night and day from the base card as well, showing that two fans and a proper heatsink with heatpipes makes a big difference, even with the big overclock.
