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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 Cyberpunk 2077 for 30 minutes.
In terms of noise levels, there is again a good amount of variation between the cards tested. Top of the pile is the iChill X4 which produced 46dBa of noise with its fans spinning up to 59%, or 2150RPM. The Palit and Gigabyte models are next when using their OC, or Performance BIOS, as these modes do run a higher power limit than the Silent BIOS modes.
As for the Founders Edition, that hit 40dBa which is a bit louder than the likes of the RTX 3070 FE, but it's not terrible. Thankfully, we did get lower results from the Gaming OC's Silent BIOS, which produced 37dBa. It's still not exactly silent, but it is the lowest noise reading of all the RTX 3080 Tis we tested.
Update 20/07/21: Inno3D have been in touch and sent us a second iChill X4 to test – the acoustic results of which are below.
Our new sample produced noticeably less noise than our original, with the fans spinning at 53% – down from 59%. That put total noise output at 42dBa, so it's still relatively loud compared to the other models, but it is an improvement.
