It shouldn't reach 550W, the 295X2 also didn't...
Problem is, that's but a single benchmark that only looked at the power consumed by their entire system - which is a measure that will be intrinsically fuzzy/imprecise and prone to high variability. TechPowerUp, comparatively,
measures power consumption directly at the PCI slot and power connectors (emphasis mine):
For this test, we measure the power consumption of only the graphics card via the PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 digital multimeter with 6.5-digit resolution is used for all measurements. Again, the values here only reflect the card's power consumption as measured at its DC inputs, not that of the whole system.
For maximum power draw (so, worst-case, as they run FurMark), it's not very promising. The card can pull a massive amount of power when it wants to, even just at stock clocks:
For the more reasonable "peak" power draw, though (which is just the highest captured power consumption during game play alone), it's still quite high:
It's tempting to assume that, just as the 290X scales favorably to the 295x2, the Fury X could scale well with a second GPU added. But we just don't have any confidence in that assumption for a variety of reasons:
- The 290X runs very hot on air, while the 295x2 runs a lot cooler on water. With the Fury X, the GPU is already on water.
- With the 295x2, AMD used binned chips that were more efficient than those used in the 290X. With a dual-GPU card on Fiji, which uses a brand new manufacturing process and architecture, AMD's yields and ability to do this sort of binning could be limited.
- The power/efficiency scalability of Fiji in general is currently a complete unknown to us - all we know for sure is what the Fury X does in comparison to the 290X.
Basically, we can't be totally confident about much of anything (with respect to the performance of a dual-GPU Fiji card), but there are more than a few signs that indicate that it will likely be very challenging to use on SFX.
Indeed ! The Ncase M1 does seem to reach its comfort-zone limit above 500W builds, but I'd guess getting a dual-GPU card running properly in the Kimera shouldn't be too much of a challenge.
The airflow scheme within Nova is much more conducive to multi-GPU builds, and we've seen that even just a 140mm side fan can sustain positive pressure that clears out heat pretty quickly. Although you'll generally have cards and components see moderately warmer temperatures than in a much larger case, SLI and CrossFire are certainly feasible if (bluntly put) you aren't stupid about what you put in.
And, of course, cards with blocks and rads - such as the Fury X - are an interesting proposition in their own right.