Palit RTX 4090 GameRock OC Review – Midnight Kaleidoscope

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.

We note just a 1dBa difference in noise output between the two BIOS, with the Silent BIOS hitting 37dBa, compared to 38dBa for the Performance BIOS. That’s because the fans ran just 85rpm faster with the Performance BIOS in our testing, hitting 1520rpm, compared to 1435rpm in the Silent mode. That does make the GameRock OC the quietest RTX 4090 we've tested so far, but I’d have expected a bigger difference between the two BIOS modes.

I also noticed that the fans seemed to make a slight buzzing or whining noise when spinning. This definitely isn't coil whine as it stopped when the fans stopped, but be sure to check out the video to hear this in action.

The good news is I hardly noticed this when the rest of my system fans were spinning as normal, so it’s hardly a big deal, but depending on how quietly you have your system fans tuned, it could be worth considering.

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