Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop 5680 Review: Attractive, Affordable PC Gaming
Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop (5680): Power Consumption And Noise
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We measured the load wattage on this system by running a combination of Prime95 and Furmark for an extended period of time and then taking note of peak usage. This gives us an idea of a worst case scenario. In this case, the Inspiron Gaming Desktop 5680 mostly stayed at 30W while idling with occasional spikes here and there, and peaked at 251W when stressing both the CPU and GPU under a heavy load. That's the lowest power output of the bunch, with this being a case where sitting at the bottom of the graph is a desirable thing.
This PC is running on a 460W power supply. If you wanted to upgrade the GPU at some point, there should be enough headroom to run a GeForce GTX 1070 or GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. Yes, NVIDIA recommends having a 500W PSU for either of those cards, but that's probably being a little conservative. After all, Dell does sell a version of this PC with a GeForce GTX 1070 using the same PSU. Dell also uses a 460W PSU in its XPS Tower, with a GeForce GTX 1070 inside that as well, and we never ran into any power issues on that machine.
Inspiron Gaming Desktop 5680 Noise Profile
This is an incredibly polite machine in terms of noise output. Like the XPS Tower, you don't hear much coming from the chassis when surfing the web or doing other lightweight tasks. However, it's also fairly quiet when gaming or otherwise stressing the PC, whereas the XPS Tower had a tendency to get loud under load.The main reason it stays quiet is because there aren't a lot of fans—it just has a single 120mm exhaust fan in the rear. Cooling doesn't seem to suffer, as beneath the stylish exterior is a functional design with plenty of ventilation, both on the front and side of the case. This allows the case to breathe rather than trap hot air inside. We didn't run into any thermal issues, and again, noise was never bothersome either. That said, there is a spot to add a 120mm intake fan in the front if you want more active cooling.