KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
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.
Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. 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.
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
An exceptionally quiet card, it would be difficult to hear any noise inside a gaming system. We do however feel Asus should have been slightly more aggressive with their fan profile as the temperatures recorded on the last page could be lower.
a 3 slot cooler seems insane for basically what is a 7970. I like the card overall, but in crossfire I would have no motherboard visible and the cards would be butting against each other.
I would have bought this one if the price was £280 and it has a two slot cooler. three slot coolers just take up too much room
Zardon, any chance you can throw up the 7970 Matrix Platinum (http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/asus-matrix-hd7970-platinum-graphics-card-review) up there in tests? Probably the best apples-to-apples comparison over ASUS’ flagship model between these two generations.
Isnt Vapor-X running @ 950 Mhz while the Matrix Platinum running 1100 Mhz. Wouldnt that give a fair bump in the degrees? (enough to justify the 11c higher in gaming)
My bad i see the site ive been looking at only displays base clock at 950, the boost clock is 1070. Nevermind then 🙂