In past years, gamers would accept everything for a little more performance. Nowadays, users are more aware of their graphics card's fan noise and power consumption.
In order to properly test how much noise a card's fan emits, we use a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound-level meter (~$4,000). It has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.
Also I have to report some level of coil noise on the card, which is most prominent during high FPS scenes, ie. menus or loading screens.
The tested graphics card is installed in a system that does not emit any noise on its own, using a passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard, and a solid state drive. Noise results of other cards on this page are measurements of the respective reference design.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified), the measurement is conducted at a distance of 100 cm and 160 cm off the floor. Ambient background noise inside the room was well below 20 dBA for all measurements. Please note that the dBA scale is not linear but logarithmic. 40 dBA is not twice as loud as 20 dBA since a 6 dBA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing perception is a bit different, and it is generally accepted that a 10 dBA increase doubles the perceived sound level. 3D load noise levels are tested with a stressful game, not with Furmark.
Unfortunately, AMD did not include the idle-fan-stop feature with their card, which puzzles me since it has become a basic feature on nearly all boards on the market today, except for NVIDIA reference designs, which fail here as well.
With the high gaming power consumption on RX Vega, we were not surprised to see very high fan noise levels during gameplay. AMD has limited the fan's maximum speed to ensure it doesn't get even noisier, even when the card climbs up to 85°C, its maximum temperature level. With 45 dBA, the card should be considered very noisy and not an option if you value low noise. NVIDIA-based cards do much better here because of their much better power efficiency, which translates into less heat and means that the thermal solution won't have to work as hard.
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