GeForce GTX 480 4-way SLI review - Power consumption and Noise levels

Power consumption and Noise levels

It's time to slowly wrap up things. But not before we had a little chat about power consumption. Now we are not spending much scientific attention to this page. We all know that the GeForce GTX 480 is not exactly the most efficient GPU on the block with its 250W TDP. Four of these when peaking can already consume a full KW of energy. Add another 130 W for the processor another 40 for the chipset and then some more for peripherals and 1200W really is something you need at minimum.

This was the reason why we split up the system over two power supplies. During the test runs we had a Watt meter (measures at socket side) measure how much power  the system has drawn.

Example: 1188W with the system non-overclocked -- that's already a lot.

As you can observe in the chart above, at maximum we did draw 1529 Watt from the power socket with everything overclocked and CPU and four GPUs voltage tweaked. Granted we did use two very high energy efficient power supplies rated 88~90%, this actually helps saving us a little on power consumption. Ridiculous numbers really. But meeeh, for a temporary experiment like shown today, who cares right ?

The heat disposed by the GTX 480 cards once overclocked is amazing, within a couple of minutes the room temperature started to get higher. With fan RPm maxed out and a little additional cooling you will remain at roughly 80 Degrees C and just above 90 Degrees C once voltage tweaked. It's a heck of a lot of noise though.

Just for the sake of it, I also added some DBa reading. measured at 75 CM away from the setup. At 62 DBa it's suffice to say that this setup is a lot. A normal PC emits roughly 40~42 DBa measured at 75cm distance. A very loud PC is 46~48 DBa, and yes .. with the fan RPM maxed out we reached 62 DBa.