GTX 1070 Power Consumption: How Much Power Does The GTX 1070 Use?
Even though the GTX 1070 isn’t one of the latest graphics cards it is still a good pick if you are looking for some decent performance with a budget.
With newer graphics card models coming out fairly frequently, older versions of these GPUs are often forgotten and because of this the price of these graphics cards often goes down, but their performance still stays the same.
With that being said it is also very important to talk about the power consumption of the GTX 1070, and its power supply requirements, and compare this GPU to other GPUs’ power consumption.
How Many Watts Does The GTX 1070 Use?
This GPU is advertised with a TGP or Total Graphics Power of 150 watts, but you will typically experience around 145W of power when gaming. In idle mode, the GTX 1070 will use around 6 watts of power, but that will increase when you add a second monitor to your setup.
The power consumption of your GPU will change depending on what games you are playing, and what applications you are using on your computer.
Another thing to note is the idle power consumption. The idle power consumption of the GTX 1070 is 6 watts.
The idle power consumption of a GPU will increase for every monitor you have in your setup. The more monitors you use the higher your idle power consumption will be.
For example, when the GTX 1070 is introduced to a multi-monitor setup it will have a power draw of 7 watts when idle.
This is very good considering it only increased by 1 watt when we added a second monitor to our setup. Most GPUs, will usually at least double in wattage.
When you are looking and comparing a GPUs power consumption, you want to look at the GPU TGP or Total Graphics Power, which shows the base power draw you will get when using your GPU for things such as gaming
When talking about power consumption, you might hear the phrase “TDP” used interchangeably with the phrase “TGP”. Essentially TGP and TDP are the same things, but TDP is the total power consumption of a component and TGP is the total power consumption of a GPU specifically.
You should also note that the TGP of a GPU isn’t the true maximum power draw of the specific graphics card, and the power consumption can be increased when computing graphically intensive tasks and while overclocking.
With the GTX 1070, the maximum recorded power draw for this GPU is around 155 watts, which is only a 5-watt increase so it is not something to typically worry about.
GTX 1080 Ti Power Consumption Compared To Other GPUs
The GPUs power consumption is compared using TGP. It is essential to know and compare your graphics cards to other similar models because it will help you get a grasp on the amount of power your system is going to use.
Here is a comparison of a few graphics cards that are around the performance range of the GTX 1080 Ti.
As you can see with each generation of Nvidia GPUs their mid-to-high tier 70 GPUs have a fairly noticeable power consumption increase.
With the latest 3070 having a 70-watt increase from the GTX 1070. However, that is to be expected because it is a more powerful GPU.
There is no 4070 out yet, but Nvidia says they will release one this year, which makes me wonder what the power consumption of that GPU will be because the latest 40-series GPUs have actually reduced their power draw and are a lot more power efficient now.
However, I doubt it will be more power efficient than the GTX 1070.
If you want to compare more graphics cards on their power consumption and TGP I have provided a database where you can look at dozens of different GPUs and their power consumption, that way you don’t have to do the research yourself.
Check out the Database.
I have also provided the average power consumption when gaming, as well as the average power consumption when idle, that way you can get a better understanding.
GTX 1070 vs GTX 1070 Ti: Power Consumption
| GPU | TGP |
|---|---|
| GTX 1070 | 150 Watts |
| GTX 1070 Ti | 180 Watts |
Check out: “What Does Ti Mean in a GPU?”
The GTX 1070 is a power-efficient card compared to the GTX 1070 Ti. However, there really isn’t that big of a difference when comparing these two.
The increased performance of the 1070 Ti makes it understandable that there is a 30-watt difference, but there really isn’t that significant difference in performance between these two cards.
What Power Supply Do You Need For The GTX 1070?
The minimum recommended power supply unit for the GTX 1070 is 500 watts.
However, that is the minimum and I would always recommend getting a power supply that is a little higher than the minimum recommendation, and here is why.
Going from personal experience you should always go a little bit above the minimum recommended PSU that the manufacturer recommends because there is a very likely possibility that you will go over that power requirement once your computer is fully built, or upgraded.
In my opinion, I would make sure to have 550 Watt power supply, that way I will have an extra 50 watts of wiggle room to do any hardware upgrades, or overclocking in the future.
Another reason to have a slightly higher power supply than recommended is that your computer will randomly have power spikes when under intense load, if your PSU just meets the needs of your computer and experiences a power spike, it could damage your PSU or even other parts of your computer.
Trust me, this is what happened with my first computer, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
Although there are many power supply brands and different qualifications out there I would recommend you go for something that is at least 80 Plus certified that comes from a trusted brand such as EVGA, or Corsair.
This will provide you with power supply hardware that is very reliable and can save you on your energy bill as well.
The reason for this is that a power supply unit that is not certified can take a significant amount of electricity out of your wall that doesn’t do anything. Not only that, but power supplies from a brand that isn’t trusted can damage other parts of your computer, or have underlying issues that you will experience sooner or later.
