The EVGA GTX 1070 SuperClocked comes with a relatively small overclock out of the box, increasing GPU frequency from the NVIDIA default of 1506 MHz to 1595 MHz. Other board vendors go much higher here. Memory remained untouched, running at its default, and we have no idea why. Our manual testing shows that there is tons of headroom left in these GDDR5 chips for a free boost to performance. Overall, averaged over all the games in our test suite, we see a performance uplift of 3% over the GTX 1070 reference board, which means the card is 20% slower than the much more expensive GeForce GTX 1080. The popular GTX 970 SLI combination is around 13% slower, just like the GTX 980 Ti and AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X.

Most people have without a doubt been waiting for custom designs to see if their coolers will offer better capabilities than the NVIDIA reference design heatsink, which looks pretty, but fails to keep the card from running at its full potential due to throttling beyond 82°C. EVGA's new revision 3.0 of the ACX thermal solution scores full marks here. It keeps the card at around 73°C even during heavy gaming while its fans are much quieter than on the reference. EVGA's fans are actually unbelievably quiet given the card's performance. You almost won't hear them when the card is installed in a case and running at full load. EVGA has also included the idle-fan-off feature we love so much since it provides a perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, and even light gaming.

Just like on the reference design, power efficiency is amazing, with huge improvements over the Maxwell architecture that is already highly efficient in the first place. Unlike all other custom designs I tested so far, EVGA did not trade efficiency for higher performance. This means that the card is slightly more power efficient than the GTX 1070 reference while providing better performance at the same time, but without the additional performance other board partners get by increasing power draw. While this might be nice for some, I think it's also some lost potential. By increasing the power board limit for example, EVGA could have enabled NVIDIA's Boost 3.0 algorithm to boost higher for longer, which could also have helped run a higher out-of-the-box overclock. On the other hand, it might have increased heat output, which would have meant higher fan noise.
This probably also explains why EVGA decided to stick to the 8-pin of the reference design, while other board partners add another 6-pin to at least give the impression of higher power capability. In reality, most of those cards have the power limit set too low to make full use of the extra power inputs.

Currently, the EVGA GTX 1070 SC is listed online for $439, which is similar to other custom-design GTX 1070s, but still way too high; remember, we were told $379. Today, one month after launch, not a single card is priced like that. Rather, it seems as though pricing for custom designs is gravitating toward the Founders Edition price of $449; some cards above, some below. However, if you compare the EVGA GTX 1070 SC to the Founders Edition, it's definitely the better deal. You will save 10 bucks and gain amazing noise and temperature levels and no thermal throttling. On the other hand, compared to the MSRP of $379, a price increase of $60 is too much. Given the huge demand and limited availability right now, companies get away with this and cash in on people who want their new graphics card now.