Power Consumption
Power Saver?
AMD's total board power rating for the Radeon RX 550 is 50W, and we measured worst-case gaming power consumption at 47W. Due to aggressive throttling, MSI's RX 550 Aero ITX 2GB does even better during our stress test (though not by much).
The RX 550 Aero ITX 2GB’s idle results could be improved by a watt or so if MSI slowed down its fan. As it stands, the fan spins at 1600 RPM, which isn’t necessary. Still, a 7W reading at idle is pretty low.
Gaming Power Consumption
The power consumption curve shows large fluctuations. In spite of our low-pass filter, the peaks reach 59W. At least our calculated average remains under AMD's board power specification.
The current curve follows suit. AMD's PowerTune technology intervenes when needed, and those events are easy to spot. Every time there is a spike, clock rates are throttled and the current drops massively.
Stress Test Power Consumption
The load is a lot more constant during our stress test, and we don’t observe any peaks. The RX 550 Aero ITX 2GB’s power consumption stays under 50W due to the throttling of clock rate and voltage. This is where MSI's card hits its limit. Not even manual overclocking can extract anything else out of it.
The current curve turns out as we'd expect it to during the constant load.
Motherboard Slot Utilization
Finally, let’s take a look at how well MSI's RX 550 Aero ITX 2GB conforms to the PCI-SIG’s motherboard slot specifications.
The card’s low power consumption suggests that there shouldn't be a problem, and our measurements confirm this to be true. The maximum peak of 4.6A lands well below the 5.5A ceiling.
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