Don't overlook undervolting a quality GPU. I took my RTX 5070 and carefully undervolted it, allowing me to maintain 90% of the performance while running the fans at much lower RPMs. The MSI Gaming Trio OC models tend to have excellent cooling solutions that can be tuned for silence. It's worth the extra tuning effort for the performance-to-noise ratio.

I totally agree that undervolting is a game changer for noise but u gotta be careful because if u push it too far ur system becomes super unstable and honestly crashing mid-game is the opposite of a reliable build anyway... I've seen so many people tinker too much and end up with silent PCs that just blue screen constantly lol. If u want something that stays quiet and reliable for years without the constant tweaking here are two I've looked at: 1. ASUS GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Noctua OC Edition - This is basically the king of silent air cooling because it uses actual Noctua fans which are way more reliable than standard GPU fans but the downside is it's a 4-slot monster so it might not fit in ur case.
2. Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX - I like this for reliability because the fans are easily replaceable if they start rattling later on and the vapor chamber cooling is top-tier so the fans dont have to spin up much anyway. TL;DR: Go with the ASUS Noctua model if ur case is big enough for max reliability or the Sapphire Nitro+ for high performance with easy-to-service fans.

I've been running a completely silent build for about 2 years now. The Asus ROG Strix RTX 4060 Ti OC has been amazing - its 0dB fan technology means the fans don't spin at all during light loads. Paired with a decent passive CPU cooler and fanless PSU, you can achieve true silence for most productivity tasks. The fans only kick in during gaming, and even then they're pretty quiet.

Gonna try this over the weekend. Will report back if it works!