In past years, gamers would accept everything for a little more performance. Nowadays, users are more aware of their graphics card's fan noise and power consumption.
In order to properly test how much noise a card's fan emits, we use a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound-level meter (~$4,000). It has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.
The tested graphics card is installed in a system that does not emit any noise on its own, using a passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard, and a solid state drive. Noise results of other cards on this page are measurements of the respective reference design.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified), the measurement is conducted at a distance of 100 cm and 160 cm off the floor. Ambient background noise inside the room was well below 20 dBA for all measurements. Please note that the dBA scale is not linear but logarithmic. 40 dBA is not twice as loud as 20 dBA since a 6 dBA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing perception is a bit different, and it is generally accepted that a 10 dBA increase doubles the perceived sound level. 3D load noise levels are tested with a stressful game, not with Furmark.
Unfortunately, the NVIDIA RTX 2060 Founders Edition lacks the idle-fan-off feature we all love so much. With 28 dBA in idle, it is very quiet, though, which makes it very hard to notice over any other actively cooled components in your case. Custom board designs from NVIDIA's board partners will definitely come with the Zero RPM feature.
Gaming noise levels are good, and better than all competing cards. Here again, I'm sure custom board designs will further drive down noise levels thanks to their bigger coolers. Note how the card is as quiet as AMD's R9 Fury X, which is the company's watercooled flagship from a few years ago, and the RTX 2060 is much faster at the same time.
123
