PowerColor RX 6800 XT Red Devil Review

We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Time Spy stress test for 30 minutes.

For noise levels, we’ll start with the OC BIOS. This option sees the fans run at 45%, or 1350rpm, producing 38dBa on our noise meter, so it’s very easy on the ears. It is slightly louder than the reference card in this mode, but it’s also running faster with a higher power target.

As for the Silent BIOS, this drops fan speed down to 35%, or about 1060rpm. At this speed, the fans are effectively inaudible, and I am sure we would have actually seen a lower noise reading than 35dBa, were it not for a small amount of coil whine which was louder than the fan noise in this mode. In normal operation, this coil whine wasn’t noticeable over our system fans, but we obviously disable these for the noise tests, making the coil whine audible.

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