MSI GeForce GTX 1070 SEA HAWK X Review

GPU Temperature

The cooler of the MSI GTX 1070 Sea Hawk X is absolutely amazing. The GPU temperature never exceeded 50C. When the system is idle, the temperature stays at 32C (with room temperature at 25C). Under heavy load (which in this scenario is either Fire Strike or Furmark), the temperature gradually rises to 48C.

THERMAL EXAMINATION
32 C	48 C
GPU IDLE	GPU LOAD

Here’s the first chart from our stress test. We let GPU warm up for 10 minutes, and then let it cool down for 2. It takes more than 2 minutes to reach idle temperature.

The radiator fan is set in push mode at the rear of the case. The RPM should be at around 40% (less than 1100 RPM).

Please note that GPU Usage and Power Usage charts include 2-minute cool-down period, that affects average value.

GPU Usage

During our tests GPU usage never reaches 100%. Furmark shows higher oscillation.

GPU Power Usage

For YouTube playback we are only observing just a small increase in power usage. Fire Strike shows higher variance than Furmark.

GPU clock stability

This chart may be hard to read at first, but believe me, it looks much better for cards without such a strict TDP limit, which in case of MSI GTX 1070 Sea Hawk X is just 105%. In some games like Hitman you can even expect a difference of 128 MHz in core clock. Such behavior would be acceptable from GTX 1080, but for 1070 it should be less severe. Let me remind you that this card has 150+75 Watts available, so the only reason behind this fluctuation is the power limit set in BIOS.

Memory Usage

All games shown below were running at 4K ultra or very high settings. Only Deus Ex requires more than 6GB of VRAM. So at no point we reached the physical VRAM limit.