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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. It isn’t a real world situation to be measuring with a case panel off only a few centimeters away from a video card. Our noise figures may therefore be lower than other publications who record at closer distances, or without a fully closed case muting the noise.
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 levels are very quiet when idle, and they rise to audible levels when gaming. The card isn't the quietest we have tested, although the fans are ‘low pitched', so noise levels are never really annoying.
This is awesome- i love the GPU reviews here. Wish I had £500 spare, or £600 for the 8GB version.
Sapphire focus a lot on the VRM’s – which many AMD partners DON”T. Glad to see you pointing it out in this review
The Sapphire 290 is the better value card, its only 6 phase, not 10, but it overclocks well and saves you £130. enough to get a good new power supply
I prefer their blue finish, to the orange. its very sexy. I still have a Sapphire AIW card, thats how well they are built 😉
Not much of an AMD fan but that card looks sexy.