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.
The Gaming X Trio is a whisper-quiet graphics card. Default behaviour sees the three fans spin up to 43%, or 1510rpm, registering just 35dBa on our sound meter. The noise was barely noticeable to the ear, and only when I moved within a few inches of our Meshify S2 chassis.