Power and Temperature
To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data. We use GPUz sensor data to record the results. We report on the GPUz sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data.
Board Power Draw
The above Board Power Draw is taken from GPUz sensor data playing games. Considering how much faster the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING video card was compared to the GeForce RTX 2060 FE, the power difference isn’t that large. The EVGA RTX 3060 only consumes 4% more board power compared to the RTX 2060 FE. Yet in our performance data, we saw 19-20% performance advantages most of the time. The new GeForce RTX 3060 Ampere architecture is a more power-efficient GPU compared to GeForce RTX 2060 FE Turing architecture. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti consumes 21% more power than the GeForce RTX 3060 but did also provide much more performance, so that is efficient also.
GPU Chip Power Draw
In the above graph, we are now looking at the GPU Chip Power Draw data from GPUz. Now we can include the Radeon RX 5700, as it did not show Board Power Draw. Once again we find the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING video card to be very close in GPU Chip power compared to the RTX 2060 FE and Radeon RX 5700. It doesn’t consume a ton of power to provide a big increase in performance. Compared to the RTX 2060 FE it’s 6% more GPU chip power.
Temperature
GPU temperatures are also very positive for the new GeForce RTX 3060. Do keep this in mind all the video cards are using reference coolers, except for the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING. There is no “Founders Edition” or reference cooler design from NVIDIA for the GeForce RTX 3060. Therefore the excellent temperatures are directly related to the quality of EVGA’s dual-fan cooling solution.
It appears from this data that it is doing very well indeed, as it has the coolest temperatures out of all the video cards. At 67-68c the GPU was well cooled and primed for overclocking. The fans did surpass 70% though, which seems a bit high, but the temperatures were very good because of it. We didn’t notice any loud fan noise. You can adjust the fan profile though through EVGA Precision X1 software if that is not to your liking. The temperature will increase of course, if you slow the fans down. We will definitely get into this more when we test overclocking on the video card. For now, it looks like the cooler is doing its job well.