Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 Fury 4GB

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury is an exceptionally quiet graphics card. Under idle or low load conditions the fans disable completely and the card is silent (our equipment is limited to an accurate minimum reading of 28dBa). Under load the card measures 33 dBa which is very quiet indeed. A single case fan would likely drown out the fans on the Sapphire card completely.

Due to coil whine and pump noises associated with our Rev 1 sample of Fury X, the Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury was noticeably quieter than the liquid cooled, higher cost model. We have not been able to get our hands on a Rev 2 sample of Fury X yet to compare, but we will in due time.

We tested the Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury 4GB for coil whine by running some intense stress tests and games at over 500 frames per second. We noticed a little, but it is barely noticeable.

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