EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card Review

By Nathan Kirsch June 28, 2016

Temperature & Noise Testing

The gaming performance on a graphics card is the most important factor in buying a card, but you also need to be concerned about the noise, temperature and power consumption numbers.

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC Idle and Load Temps:

When it comes to temperatures the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SCS Gaming ACX 3.0 idled around 56C on our open air test bench and then hit 75C at load while gaming. The ACX 3.0 cooler features a 0dB fan design until the temperatures top 60C, so this is why the fan speed shows 0dB at idle and why the idle temps are so high. At load our fan topped out at 2,300 RPM while gaming. Notice that the boost clock speed on our card topped out at 1936MHz at times despite being rated at 1848MHz.

Here is a chart that shows the temperatures of the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC versus some other high-end desktop cards. It’s 8C cooler than the Founders Edition at load.

Sound Testing

We test noise levels with an Extech sound level meter that has 1.5dB accuracy that meets Type 2 standards. This meter ranges from 35dB to 90dB on the low measurement range, which is perfect for us as our test room usually averages around 36dB. We measure the sound level two inches above the corner of the motherboard with ‘A’ frequency weighting. The microphone wind cover is used to make sure no wind is blowing across the microphone, which would seriously throw off the data.

Our EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC sample had no choke whine whatsoever and the double ball bearings on the 100mm fans were very quiet. This is the first flagship card that we have benchmarked recently that doesn’t get over 40dB! No sound issues with this card!

** The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X reference card that we are using was the original model with a loud water pump that whines. AMD changed the pump design before the cards hit the retail market, but wasn’t willing to replace ours. We expect retail cards to perform quieter for this and hopefully AMD will send us a replacement card for proper noise testing. **