NVIDIA Quadro M2000 Review: Affordable Maxwell Pro Graphics

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 graphics 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.

Both of these professional workstation graphics cards are low-power offerings that do not require supplemental power feeds -- they're powered solely by the PCI Express slot their inserted into. The Quadro M2000 consumed a bit less power while idling, but under load the system used almost 30 additional watts with the Quadro. Interestingly enough, the delta in peak power consumption is similar to the lead the Quadro held over the W4300 in some benchmarks.

In terms of noise, there's really not much to say. The fan on the card will spin up under load, but it's very quiet and would likely be almost inaudible enclosed in a typical mid-tower.