Power Consumption & Temperatures

When compared to a standard GTX 580, Gigabyte's SOC model consumed 9% more power under load while slightly less at idle. Our overclock increased the power load by another 2% while idle consumption remained the same. Although those increases sound nominal, they put the card's consumption levels just below the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 and ultimately make the GTX 580 the most power-hungry single-GPU card we've ever tested.

Incredibly, despite guzzling so much electricity, Gigabyte's custom cooler keeps the GTX 580 SOC at just 63 degrees when under full load, not to mention the fact that it's remarkably quiet. Compared to a run-of-the-mill GTX 580, the manually overclocked GTX 580 SOC was 19% cooler (66 degrees) and much easier on the ears.