Power, Temperature and Noise
Overclocked on both core and memory, the Inno3D iChill X3 is the most power-hungry GTX 980 Ti we've seen thus far and increases system-wide power consumption under load by as much as 50 watts compared to the reference card.
That's interesting. Despite the gargantuan heatsink assembly, Inno3D's card doesn't run as cool as the Gigabyte or Zotac alternatives. Then again, 75ºC is well within the GPU's limits, and there is an upside to running a fraction warmer...
Noise levels are, for the most part, wonderfully low. Inno3D's three fans turn off completely at low load and barely make a whisper when gaming. Perusing our log files reveals that fan speed peaked at 34 per cent during testing - that translates to just 1,000RPM, which is very nice and quiet, and we like the fact that Inno3D's fan profile ramps-up gradually.
There are no sudden changes in fan speed and if you're wanting a high-end card with a well-tuned cooler, the iChill X3 is one of the best. The catch? Well, the card's fans are so quiet that coil whine becomes more evident, and though the amount of whine will inevitably vary from one sample to the next, our review card did tend to shriek in certain games.