Noise levels - Sound pressure readings
Acoustic Levels
With a certified dBA meter, we measure how many DBAs originate from the PC. It's slightly subjective as there is always noise in the background, from the streets, from the HD, PSU fan, etc so this is by a mile or two, not a precise measurement. You could only achieve objective measurement in a sound test chamber. Take this measurement as an indication, not a precise measurement, please.
The human hearing system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. This means that the perception of noise is not at all equal at every frequency. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as it would be when its energy is 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 the dBA level. A specific circuit is added to the sound level meter to correct its reading in regard to this concept. This reading is the noise level in dBA. The letter A is added to indicate the correction that was made in the measurement. Frequencies below 1kHz and above 6kHz are attenuated, whereas frequencies between 1kHz and 6kHz are amplified by the A weighting.
| TYPICAL SOUND LEVELS | ||
| Jet takeoff (200 feet) | 120 dBA | |
| Construction Site | 110 dBA | Intolerable |
| Shout (5 feet) | 100 dBA | |
| Heavy truck (50 feet) | 90 dBA | Very noisy |
| Urban street | 80 dBA | |
| Automobile interior | 70 dBA | Noisy |
| Normal conversation (3 feet) | 60 dBA | |
| Office, classroom | 50 dBA | Moderate |
| Living room | 40 dBA | |
| Bedroom at night | 30 dBA | Quiet |
| Broadcast studio | 20 dBA | |
| Rustling leaves | 10 dBA | Barely audible |
In both idle and load, you cannot hear the fan. Even when we put the processor at 100% load with several full 1024M runs. Noise pressure is still not an issue. The cooler is totally silent when it comes to acoustic levels.
So what happens when we start to overclock? Well, after 1.35 Volts on the CPU the kit becomes a tiny bit noisier. However, it does not have enough cooling capacity to deal with such a voltage. We'll show you that on the next page.
