Power, Temperature and Noise
Are there potential upsides to EVGA's conservative overclock? If you're keeping a close eye on electricity usage, then perhaps so, as under-load power consumption is kept reasonably low for a card of this ilk.
We've double- and triple-checked our logs, and they aren't lying. The GTX 980 Ti Hybrid didn't exceed 47ºC during our battery of benchmarks. For an overclocked GTX 980 Ti that's practically cold, though the ultra-low temperatures do come with a caveat...
...yep, noise levels aren't great. EVGA is usually a stickler for the finer details, so we're surprised to find the 980 Ti Hybrid Gaming running loud and boisterous at all times. The combination of onboard fan, pump and radiator fan can be heard quite clearly even with the system idling, and noise levels rise another notch or two when under full load.
The cooling profile could clearly be reined-in to find a more suitable middle ground between noise and temperature, but on this particular card, EVGA appears to favour the latter above all else. Handy if you want maximum cooling, but the Hybrid card is too vocal for our liking.
