AMD Radeon R9 380X Review: Fastest GPU Under $250
Power Consumption, Noise, and Temps
Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a couple of final data points -- namely, power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored acoustics and tracked how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you an idea of how much power each configuration used while idling and also while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.
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At idle, all of the graphics cards we tested used similar amounts of power, give or take just a few watts. Under load, however, the field really spreads out. The Radeon R9 380X consumed a bit more power than the Radeon R9 285, as you'd expect, and almost hit the mark set by the GeForce GTX 970.
Temperatures and noise were non-issues with the Sapphire Nitro R9 380X we tested. The card idles in the high 40'C range and under load stayed in the mid-70's. And throughout testing, the card remained nice and quiet. It's not silent, but by no measure would anyone consider the card loud under normal operating conditions.
