Cooling Noise and Power

For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage.

For this, our test setup utilizes the Nvidia-designed PCat v2 along with cables to handle both traditional 6 or 8-pin connections as well as 12VHPWR. The PCat also utilizes a PCIe adapter to measure any power going to the card through the PCIe slot so we can measure the video card wattage exclusively, not the entire system as we have done in the past. I test with a mix of applications to get both in game, synthetic benchmarks, and other workloads like GeekbenchAI and AIDA64. Then everything is averaged together for our result. I also have the individual results for this specific card and I document the peak wattage result. I do have to note that during my testing of the RTX 5090 and not the RTX 5080, I ran into issues with a few tests, especially with OpenCL which is what AIDA64 uses to do their stress tests. I ended up having to replicate our test results using OCCT. To get as close as possible I used the 3D Adaptive stress test in OCCT and using the 4090 I stress tested it and played around with settings to get to a setting where OCCT replicated the same power usage and card temperatures. In the future, once that issue is fixed I will be redoing our 5090 and 5080 tests with AIDA64, but this issue was confirmed to be reproducible by Nvidia the day before launch and I didn’t have time to retest the whole list of cards tested. That said the OCCT result wasn’t the peak power usage here, so any difference between the tests will only change the average result slightly (but that same testing affects our temperature tests and power efficiency graphs. The RTX 5080 FE averaged 389 watts across our tests and peaked at 422 watts when running Time Spy Extreme. This put it above the RTX 3080 but below the RX 7900 XT. The RX 7900 XTX that ran behind it in our testing averaged 41 more watts and last generations RTX 4080 was farther down in the chart with an average of 339 watts.

graph36

graph37

With having exact peak wattage numbers when running Time Spy Extreme I was also able to put together a graph showing the total score for each watt that a card draws which gives us an interesting look at overall power efficiency in the popular and demanding benchmark. The higher power draw of the RTX 5080 Founders Edition compared to the RTX 4080 and RTX 3080 was offset by its increased performance. In fact, it is sitting up near the top of the chart behind the new RTX 5090 and ahead of the RTX 4090. AMD’s 7900 XTX is down further with a 31.5 Score per Watt to the 5080s 38.4 and everything in between those two are Nvidia’s 4000 series cards from last generation.

graph38

My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. The RTX 5080 Founders Edition was running at 41.4 decibels in our 50% fan speed test, this was better than the RTX 5080 and is an improvement over the 4080 FE and 4090 FE. With the fans turned all the way up it drops down in the bottom ¼ of the chart at 57 decibels. If you compare that with the RPM chart that does line up meaning the card isn’t noticeably louder or quieter than it should be for the RPM.

graph39

graph40

graph41

I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Here the RTX 5080 Founders Edition was at 39.7 decibels and right in the middle of the pack compared to the other cards. When under load the fans were running at 42% fan speed which explains it being even quieter than in the 50% fan speed test.

graph42

To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up (on everything except the 5090 which was tested on a similarly matched OCCT workload). Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition leveled off at 66c, right in the middle of our chart. This was two degrees lower than the reference RX 7900 XTX and 6 less than the RTX 5090. It was 11 lower than the RTX 4090 which it runs the closest with. The memory was running at 66c as well. Then with the fans cranked up, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition dropped down to 55c which again was right in the middle of the pack and right with the RTX 4080 and a few other Founders Edition cards. That was 3c less than the RTX 5090 FE which has a similar cooler. The memory temps ran a little cooler at 54c. All said that was a delta of 11c between the stock and 100% fan speeds (again middle of the pack) which shows there is still some headroom left if you want to play with the fan profile and don’t mind a little more noise.

graph44

graph43

graph45

graph46

graph47

While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. For the fan side, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition is noticeably cooler than all of the motherboard below it and is cooler inside behind the fans. The top edge is running nice and cool on both ends of the cards and is warmer at the center where the PCB with the hottest spot being right at the power connection, but at 41c there isn’t anything to be concerned with. The hottest temps are on the back side where you have the “backplate” in the center where the PCB is the hottest at 48c. On the left heatsink, you can see the heatpipes running through as well.

image 4

image 5

image 6

 

Log in to comment

We have 1519 guests and no members online

supportus