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 A Plague Tale: Requiem for 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, the RTX 5070 Founders Edition isn't the quietest card going. In my testing, the fans spun up to 47%, or just under 2400rpm, producing 40dBa of noise. That makes it louder than even the RTX 5090 FE – clearly, decision to shrink the card and replace the vapour chamber results in a much weaker cooler, even when dealing with just 250W, so noise levels are higher to compensate.