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Asus R9 270 Direct CU II OC Review

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
noise
This is an extremely quiet card, peaking at 33.3 dBa under gaming load. It is barely audible at all and will be drown out by one or two chassis fans. Very impressive results.

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4 comments

  1. Its a nice card and I love the DC II cooler, but I think the price is a little high, even with battlefield 4.

  2. ERAN – asus are always more expensive, but they build their cards better

  3. They dont really need the 270 and 270x, just drop the price of the 270x and they could clean up in the market. too many cards right now and its too complicated.

  4. Good performance and at least the shaders are up to 1280 over 1024 on the 7850. Only thing I feel is that AMD partners will sell the 270x at very close to 270 pricing, so not much point in having both. $20 difference? who will buy a 270 – feels like the 6830 and 6850 all over again. the cheaper part never sold as retail prices were so close.