We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the sound floor to be 34 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.
As noise levels go, the Palit is pretty easy on the ears. It is a slightly higher-pitched fan noise as it uses a single 70mm fan, but it's still quieter than most other cards on test. There's no fan-stop mode, however, so the fan will spin even when idling or in low-load situations which I think it could do without, but under load it's still a very quiet card.