Asus STRIX or MSI Gaming 4G 970 Card upgrade

[rdy4life]

Hi all,

After bouncing ideas off everyone here, I built a system back in May with the idea of incrementally upgrading it. Thanks for all the help. It's been running great. And it is dead silent. While it's not what I paid for the parts, my current build is pretty close to this PCPartPicker part list.

Now it's time to add graphics card for some introductory CUDA work and gaming.

For my price point, I am looking at both the Asus Strix 970 and MSI 970 Gaming 4G with Twin Frozr V, but a have a couple questions.

Is one better than the other from a sound perspective or in terms of power regulation and heat?

Also can anyone state for certain what power connectors each of these require? I've seen reports that the MSI has 1x6 & 1x8 with with people claiming it needs both or only one of them. The ASUS on the other hand I think only has one.

I'm asking about the connectors because my PSU has only 1x6+2, which I understand can function as either a single 6-pin or an 8-pin connector. Due to a slight price break and bundling all things being equal I think I'd prefer the MSI, but want to be sure I can power it and will be happy with it from a sound perspective.

Thanks,

rdy4life

[Abula]

I owned a couple of Asus GTX970, you can check my signature (GameMiv2 for proof), the card at idle/light load is perfect, no noise at all, but in my SLI.... when cards were pushed on real gaming loads, the card will reach 80C on the daily basis, this makes the vbios push the fans well above 2k, if i recall... about 2400rpms, this is where its loud, even with heaphones, simply not accepatable for me, so i switched to MSI GTX980Ti, they are the same as asus on idle/light load, totally passive, but on load they are much quieter, the fan curve is much less agressive and under the same load they have similar temperatures but the Asus is much higher on rpms and noise, but dont expect the MSI to be totally silent, just quieter under heavy load.

[CA_Steve]

MSI: 1x 8-pin, 1x 6-pin

Asus: fails to mention it. However, Techpowerup's review shows that it's a single 8-pin.