#NVIDIA GTX 680 LIGHTNING INSTALL#

Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 183 Watts.

System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 313 W.We'll be calculating the GPU power consumption here, not the total PC power consumption. On average we are using roughly 50 to 100 Watts more than a standard PC due to higher CPU clock settings, water-cooling, additional cold cathode lights etc. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). Our test system is based on a power hungry Core i7 965 / X58 system. We however are not disclosing which application that is as we do not want INTEL/AMD/ATI/NVIDIA to 'optimize & monitor' our stress test whatsoever, for our objective reasons of course. Note: We decided to move away from Furmark / OCCTGPU in early 2011 and are now using a game like application which stresses the GPU 100% yet is much more representable of power consumption and heat levels coming from the GPU. The before and after wattage will tell us roughly how much power a graphics card is consuming under load. We simply stress the GPU, not the processor. The methodology: We have a device constantly monitoring the power draw from the PC. Let's have a look at how much power draw we measure with this graphics card installed. No further configuration is required or needed.

#NVIDIA GTX 680 LIGHTNING INSTALL#

Don't forget to connect your monitor, you can now turn on your PC, boot into Windows, install the latest compatible NVIDIA GeForce Forceware driver and after a reboot all should be working. Preferably the PEG headers should come directly from the power supply and are not converted from 4-pin Molex peripheral connectors. Preferably your power supply is compatible most high-end PSUs built after the year 2008 have these connectors as standard.

Combined with another 75W over the PCIe bus you are looking at roughly 375 Watt that the graphics card can use.

Once the card is installed and seated into the PC, we connect the two 8-pin PEG power connectors to the graphics card. Each connector delivers up-to roughly 150W. Installation of any of GeForce graphics cards is really easy.

Nvidia gtx 680 lightning