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 for 30 minutes.
The thermal results look even better when taking noise levels into account – the Nitro+ operates at just 35dBa, so that's a healthy 6dBa reduction compared to AMD's reference card. Interestingly, noise levels are the same between BIOS 1 and BIOS 2, with both modes peaking at 36% fan speed, or around 1480rpm in our testing.
We did, however, notice some coil whine that was present on our sample. A sound test of this is shown in the video, and you can hear it over our system's case fans. It's not the worst I've ever heard but it is noticeable.