Graphics Card Acoustic Levels
Acoustic Levels
When graphics cards produce a lot of heat, usually, that heat needs to be transported away from the hot core as fast as possible. Often you’ll 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 and will start measuring how many dBA originate from the PC. Why is this subjective, you ask? There is always noise in the background, from the streets, from the HDD, PSU fan, etc., so this is an imprecise measurement by a mile or two. You could only achieve objective measures in a sound test chamber.
The human hearing system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. It means that the perception of noise is not equal at every frequency. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as 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 regarding 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.
Important note – the review is not directly comparable to Hilbert’s, as the conditions, hardware, and equipment are different; for example, the test is made in the chassis, not on the test bench, so that influences the noise levels. Also, the other GPUs included in the charts are the ones I own and can check.
Acoustic Levels at 40cm
|
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 |
The graphics card turns down the fans in passive mode, thus in desktop idle situations. We won't make the charts when a card is passive in IDLE mode. They don't make noise. Under stress, the card sits in a 38~39 DBa range; you can hear the card under load. Overall, the Yeston RTX 4070 Ti is not a perfectly silent card under heavy load.
