The Gainward GTX 970 4GB Phantom is quiet both in idle mode and under load. Of course, when the card is coping with high load, the fans are more audible, but noise levels remain low. The GPU temperature reaches the throttling point of 79-80 degrees Celsius. This temperature poses no threat for the GPU, but it’s the threshold at which the dynamic overclocking algorithm starts to kick in.

One think bothered us though – the high pitched sound made by coils when the card is under load. This is becoming an issue on Nvidia and AMD cards. A lot of designs are affected and the noise can be annoying, but luckily it is not very loud.