MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio Review

1. Introduction2. MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark Port Royal6. Control7. Death Stranding8. The Division 29. Far Cry New Dawn10. Gears 511. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint12. Metro Exodus13. Middle Earth: Shadow of War14. Red Dead Redemption 215. Shadow of the Tomb Raider16. Total War Saga: Troy17. Performance Summary (11 Game Average)18. Cost Per Frame Analysis19. Clock Speed20. Temperatures21. Acoustics22. Power Consumption23. Performance Per Watt24. Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

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 Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

It’s when we move to noise testing that we understand why the thermal performance wasn't as impressive as we hoped. Simply put, the Gaming X Trio is – for all intents and purposes – inaudible when under load. Its fans spun to about 1360rpm under load, but we measured noise levels at barely 34db from a 30cm distance, which is actually coming very close to our noise floor.

It’s certainly one of the quietest graphics cards I have ever tested, to the point where you can only really hear the fans by pressing your ear right against the case. It's seriously impressive stuff from MSI.

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