Video Card Temperature Results
For all temperature testing the cards were used in an open test bed environment. Ambient temperature was kept at a constant 20°C (+/- 0.5°C) and if the ambient room temperatures rose above 21°C or dropped below 19°C at any time, all benchmarking was stopped until proper temperatures could normalized.
For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.
For Load tests, we ran Unigine’s Valley benchmark for 20 minutes.
We are not all that surprised to see how cool running the PNY GeForce GTX 960 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB card really is. After all the GM206 core has always been known as a rather efficient design, and when paired with a rather impressive -for its class – heatsink and fan design anything less than excellent would have been disappointing.
Sound Level Test Results
While everyone “hears” noise differently there is one easy way to remove all subjectivness and easily compare different fans: use a sound level meter. This way you can easily compare the various fans noise envelopes without us coloring the results and see what fans fit within your personal comfort level. Of course, we will endeavor to try and explain the various results – which are taken at a 15 inch distance from the GPU’s fan(s) – to help you gain an even better understanding of how loud a cooler’s stock fan is, but even if you discount our personal opinions, the fact remains numbers don’t lie.
For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak dB.
For Load tests, we ran Unigine’s Valley benchmark for 20 minutes and recorded the peak dB.
Thanks to a cool running core, even when overclocked, and an excellent custom heatsink and fan design the PNY GeForce GTX 960 XLR8 OC Gaming 2GB is a rather silent running card. Better still is it does come with a ‘silent’ mode that can and will stop the fans when the video card is idling. That just underscores exactly how efficient and effective this custom heatsink really is.
System Power Consumption
To obtain accurate results we have connected the system to a Power Angle power meter that has in turn been attached to a 1500watt UPS. This ensures only 120volt power is supplied to the PSU and removes an variances that could potential crop up because of brownouts and power spikes.
In order to stress the video card we have once again used Unigine’s Valley benchmark and ran it for 20 minutes to determine peak system power consumption. For idle results we have let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 25 minutes and recorded the peak idle power consumption.
Even though this card comes with both its core and its RAM factory overclocked it still is an incredibly low power consumption video card. Color us impressed.
