We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled. A reading under load comes from running Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition for 30 minutes.
Older data is represented by the greyed-out bars on the above chart.
Adding salt to the wound is that the two 100mm fans run at quite a pace to cool the GPU and memory – we saw them hit 65%, which is just under 2000rpm, generating 44dBa of noise. That makes the Acer 4090 noticeably louder than even the Founders Edition, while it is a far cry from the likes of the TUF Gaming or GameRock OC.