PowerColor RX 7900 XTX Hellhound Spectral White Review

1. Introduction2. PowerColor RX 7900 XTX Hellhound Spectral White3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Time Spy Extreme5. Game Benchmarks6. Clock Speed7. GPU Temperatures8. Acoustics9. Noise-Normalised Temperatures10. Power Draw11. Overclocking12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

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.

The Spectral White may not run massively cooler than AMD’s own design, but the real benefit comes in terms of noise levels. The OC BIOS operated the fans at 42%, or just 1200rpm, producing 35dBa on my sound meter, which is already a huge reduction in noise against the reference card. Switch to the Silent BIOS however, and fan speed drops to 37%, a mere 1000rpm, producing noise that measured in at just 33dBa.

Unfortunately though I did notice a bit of coil whine on my sample that was just about noticeable over the fan noise. It was worse in in-game loading screens and menus where frame rates are uncapped, but it was still audible while actually gaming –  be sure to check out the sound test in our video review.

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