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 Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition for 30 minutes.
Likewise, noise levels are improved versus the RTX 4090, due to the simple fact the fans don't have to work so hard as power draw is so much lower. We observed Fan 1 operating at 1350rpm, and Fan 2 at 1275rpm, so both results are about 100-130rpm slower than what we saw from the 4090. Accordingly, noise dropped to 38dBa on our sound meter.