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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 20 times. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.
There is a clear and obvious reason as to why the GPU runs so cool – and that is fan speed. Under load, we saw the Evoke OC run its fans at 64%, around 2050rpm, and that results in a pretty loud card. It is quieter than reference, but to be honest that isn't a great yardstick to be measuring performance with. In my mind, MSI has clearly just prioritised temperatures over noise levels, resulting in a poorly-balanced fan curve.
To try and redeem matters MSI has made a ‘Silent BIOS' available on its website, but this is not a good solution. For starters, it isn't how the card ships – so users would have to manually download and flash the BIOS themselves, likely putting off a good chunk of inexperienced users. On top of that, in our testing this Silent BIOS really didn't do much, dropping fan speed by just 2%, or around 50rpm. That made no noticeable different to noise levels, so I honestly struggle to see the point.
