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 the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test for 30 minutes. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.
Adding to the excellent temperature results, acoustics is another impressive area for Gigabyte. When idling, the fans stop spinning, and under load we saw the fans ramp up to 50%, or around 1680rpm. There the card produced barely 40dB of noise, making it one of the quietest cards we have tested.