Power, Temperature and Noise
Here is where that Pascal goodness and 16nm process really come into their own. You'll certainly not have missed the similarity in performance between the 1070 and 980 Ti cards. The former is able to produce those frame rates with about 100W less system power consumption.
Which means that massive cooler is able to tame the card's temperatures easily and efficiently.
And the second benefit of strapping a huge hunk of metal on top of a mainstream GPU is near-silent operation. The sample's fans switch on at 55°C or so and then can barely be heard after 10 minutes of full-on gaming. Our logs show the pair to run at under 1,000rpm, and you have to place an ear next to the Fractal chassis to even know if it's on. Very impressive.
