Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ Limited Edition 8GB Review

Our acoustic measurements are less precise on this mid-range test system, the noise floor of the totally quiet testing room is 34 dBA as measured with a Benetech GM1351 Digital Sound Level Meter.

We take our measurements with the decibel meter on the top and middle section of the case, overhanging the side panel (PSU side, not Motherboard tray side) by exactly 1 inch to avoid any airflow pressure coming from the exhausting H100i V2.

The underlying noise level of the system, emitted by all the non-GPU hardware combined, is 35 dBa thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The PSU is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in and all CPU and System fans have a fixed fan speed completely isolating them from any changes in temperature across the system.

Noise levels were measured after 5 minutes of load under three scenario: Furmark, Unigine Heaven and desktop idle in sequential order with 2 minutes downtime in between each test.

Sapphire's opportunity to shine, the custom cooling solution, is duly taken with the RX 580. It's silent at idle with its passive fan mode and at full load it's still very quiet rarely, exceeding 35% fan duty.

Under extremely prolonged and high intensity load the fans did start to spin up during our testing to 40% or so, getting noticeably audible. However, this is likely a result of the extremely slow case fans we set to keep noise down, contributing to a “hotbox” type effect whereby the inside of the case heats up and the fans have to spin faster to compensate.

Note that enabling the Quiet mode VBIOS significantly reduces heat output and consequential noise so gamers with a preference for quiet should use this over the Boost mode VBIOS we tested with.

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