GTX 1080 Power Consumption: How Much Power Does The GTX 1080 Use?

Nvidia’s GTX 1080 used to be considered one of the most powerful graphics cards of its time. However, with the improvements in technology, the GTX 1080 although still considered a pretty good GPU, lacks the features and performance of Nvidias latest technology.

With the prices of the newest GPUs being fairly expensive, the GTX 1080 is still a good choice for more budget builds. Especially with budget builds it is very important to know how much power your GPU uses, that way you can purchase the right power supply for your GPU which is what we are going to talk about today.

How Many Watts Does The GTX 1080 Use?

The GTX 1080 has a TGP or Total Graphics Power of 180 Watts, which is the typical wattage it produces. When gaming you should expect to see an average of around 165 watts. However, when idle The GTX 1080 only uses 6 Watts of Power.

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 1080 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 1080 is introduced to a multi-monitor setup it will have a power draw of 8 watts when idle.

This is pretty good, as the power, it produces only increased by 2 watts when we added a second monitor to it.

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 1080, the maximum recorded power draw of this GPU is around 185 watts, only 5 over its TGP, which is that much compared to other GPUs.

What this tells us is that the GTX 1080 is a pretty power-efficient GPU.

GTX 1080 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.

GPU	TGP
RTX 4080	320 Watts
RTX 3080	320-350 Watts
RTX 2080	225 Watts
GTX 1080	180 Watts
GTX 1080 Ti	250 Watts
RX 5700 XT	225 Watts

You can see that the increase from each generation of Nvidia the TGP or TDP or each GPU has a significant increase compared to the GTX 1080. However, this is expected.

For those of you who are using the 1080, this can be good news for you because a GPU that has a TGP of 180 watts is considered very power efficient.

I put the RX 5700 XT in here even though it is a more recent card because the performance is very similar to the GTX 1080 and as you can see there is a 45-watt increase from the GTX 1080 to the RX 5700 XT.

That just proves the point that more power consumption doesn’t mean better performance.

Then if we compare the GTX 1080 to a graphics card from the same generation as the GTX 1080 Ti, that’s one step up from the GTX 1080.

You can see that there is an even bigger gap between the power draw of these two GPUs, proving that the GTX 1080 is a very power-efficient card.

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.

What Power Supply Do I Need to Use For The GTX 1080?

Having a good power supply is essential when building a PC. When purchasing a power supply; the quality of the power supply isn’t the only thing that matters, but also how much wattage it has as well.

If you have a really high-quality power supply, that doesn’t produce enough power for your system, you could run into some problems.

First, either your power supply or another component in your computer could break and become damaged, or you will experience frequent shut-offs, and stuttering when playing games and running tasks.

When looking for a power supply you want to aim for around 20% extra wattage that way you have some wiggling room when your system’s power spikes while you are doing intensive tasks.

If your PC uses the GTX 1080 with a TGP of 180, you also need to remember the other hardware in your computer will consume a lot of power as well.

Your motherboard will consume around 80 Watts of power, the CPU can consume anywhere from 120-200 watts of power, plus any additional hardware you are using in the rig. All these things add up so it’s good to go a little above what you think is required.

The minimum recommended power supply unit for the GTX 1080 is 500 Watts, but I would strongly suggest going above that by getting yourself a power supply that is 550 watts.

The reason for this is because in my experience I used the PSU wattage recommended by the manufacturer before and found out that it wasn’t enough wattage to support my computer’s real power requirements.

This resulted in damaging my PSU and I had to purchase another one, so I would recommend that most of the time you purchase a PSU that is 50 watts above what the manufacturer of your GPU recommends.

It would help if you also considered the grade rating of your power supply.

You want to find something that is at least 80 Plus Bronze certified.

You should read: “How Do Power Supply Ratings Work?”