GTX 960 Power Consumption Question

[kingmiltank]

Hi everyone,

I am heavily contemplating getting a gtx 960 for my first pc build, and have been doing some research into it. I saw that the TDP is 120 watts. This may be a silly question (I'm new to pc builds), but would that be how many watts it can consume whilst under heavy load? I'd like to be as power efficient as possible. I won't be playing your Witcher 3's, but maybe GTA 5 at the most. Would the 950 be more suitable?

Cheers,

Tim.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Yes, the 120 watts for a 960 is when it's being utilized full tilt, or when overclocked. When the card is just idling, it will consume in the neighborhood of 10 watts. When gaming, the card will average somewhere between 85 - 100. Again, overclocking will raise this a bit.

Tom's GTX 960 power consumption chart

Unsure what your suitability question is about. Are you asking if the 950 consumes less power than a 960? The answer if that's the case would be yes, but it would also be far less capable in gaming.

 

[Xtergo]

The Gtx 960 will be great if you don't overclock if you think that the Gtx 950 offers enough performance for your needs than its ok to choose the gtx 950 as you said you would be going as power efficient as possible but if your playing at 1080p the best advice you need is not to look at anything offering lesser performance than the Gtx 960 as time passes you might want to play more games so keep performance in mind efficiency can also be improved by better means like choosing a better and more efficient power supply.