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 the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.
Noise levels for the Pulse are very impressive, irrespective of the BIOS used, as I didn't see noise levels exceed 40dB. Just to illustrate the slight difference in fan speed between the two BIOS tested, the original BIOS saw its fans peak at 35%, or around 1150rpm. With the new BIOS applied, this increased to 39% fan speed, or around 1250rpm. It's not much of a difference at all, but the fans do work slightly harder with the new BIOS applied as there is extra heat to deal with.