To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment.
Due to the lack of a fan on the cooler, the cards power draw is a little lower than expected, topping out at only 211W at full load.
I would struggle to get used to a totally silent PC. I’m so used to the whirring off the fans that I don’t even notice them.
Fans are required? Tell that to my Nofan-cooled, fanless PSU, FT02 system which has no fans at all apart from those on my Geforce 660 Ti. How about putting the card in a rotated case like the Silverstone FT02 and make use of the fact that heat rises? It seems to me that Powercolor have done themselves a disservice by limiting themselves to two slots: as a specialist card, I don’t think anyone would blink if it took up 3 or even 4 slots.
Your benchmarks indicate that this card gives a decent gaming performance at 1080p and as such would be a shoe-in if I weren’t looking to move to 4K. Here’s hoping for a fanless Titan.
Just so you realise something…
Heat does generally rise, but in a small environment like a computer case, with any airflow, it is not going to take its natural course. Maybe If there is no fan at all, but even then it’ll just eventually heat up the whole area since there wont be any flow to move the heat out.
That’s why there are vents, just like you have on cards with blower fans. See my build log at http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1740852 for my complete system.