Acoustic performance – AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

Acoustic performance

Processors and graphics cards can produce a lot of heat, which needs to be transferred away from the hot core as quickly as possible. You’ll often see massive, active-fan solutions that can get rid of the heat, yet all the fans these days make the PC a noisy son of a gun. Do remember that the test we do is highly subjective. We bought a certified dBA meter to measure how many dBA originate from the PC. Why is this subjective, you might ask? There is always noise in the background, from the streets, from the HDD, PSU, fan, etc. It’s an imprecise measurement by a mile or two. You could only achieve objective measures in a sound test chamber.   

The human auditory system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. This means that the perception of noise is not equal across all frequencies. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as its energy concentrated in the middle frequencies. In other words, the measured noise levels in dB will not reflect the actual human perception of the loudness of the noise. That’s why we measure dBA levels. A specific circuit is added to the sound level meter to correct its reading concerning this concept. This reading is the noise level in dBA. The letter A is added to indicate the correction made in the measurement. Frequencies below 1 kHz and above 6 kHz are attenuated, whereas the A-weighting amplifies frequencies between 1 kHz and 6 kHz.  There are a lot of differences in measurements between websites. We measure noise levels in a completely enclosed room with the door closed. We can measure the lowest dBA level in this room without any equipment activated is roughly 30 dBA. We measure the noise 30 cm from the side panel. 

The Arctic Freezer Arctic Freezer A35 is doing very well in idle.

Under stress, it still performs reasonably, especially considering the not-too-bad temps.