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We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with 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 Refridgerator
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
The HIS HD7950 is reasonably quiet when idle, although the single fan can be easily heard inside a system when gaming. The HIS IceQ cooling solutions are much better and we are surprised they didn't launch with one of these on the card. The peak noise level rates just under 38 dBa in Furmark, which is fairly loud. I didn't like the ‘pitch' of the fan noise either, and found it quite intrusive.
Not the best cooling system we have seen emerge from the HIS stable.
Looks like a play on the reference design. very poor showing compared to XFX and Sapphire cards today….
would probably have been ok if they all used the crap cooler on launch day, but after reading the Sapphire review this looks so bad 🙁
This is exactly why HIS, Powercolor, Sparkle and all those crappy eastern makes never do well here. They just dont know how to target the enthusiast user. XFX and Sapphire are different. I bet Sapphire dont like XFX in their sector now. real competition heating up between those two for the top spot.
Fastest single chip video card.Runs cool and very quiet even at full load, gave me 40-45% extra performance than my 6970 HIS icecool,no crashes after hours of gaming!
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-21197-00-40G/dp/B006P88VO8?tag=emjay2d-20
great review-the most important point being that cooler cannot really handle the 7950 unless you have a large case and play games in a freezer-even then I doubt the cooler has enough capacity to continuously draw off enough heat to completely prevent instability problems under intense gaming conditions