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Thread: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled together

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    Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled together

    Hi folks,

    So when I saw the release of the Radeon R9 290 (and X) series last year, I really excited for AMD and wanted to make the switch from my current GeForce GTX 680 before it lost all its resale value.

    However, the 95oC under load combined with a noisy cooler put me off initially so I have been patiently waiting for the versions with aftermarket coolers to come along.

    I have been scanning the web regularly and the news of these particular has been pretty scarce.

    I saw some news that said end of November, then that the 290 cards would come before the 290X's....then December they'd come...virtually nothing.

    There have been, however, a few bits of information popping up. As I've spent several hours digging over Xmas and the new year, I thought I'd share with you some of my observations and ramblings as follows:


    MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming Edition

    The Gaming Edition has a backplate (which I'm a bit fan of) for both 290 and 290X editions apparently and features the 'Twin Frozr 4' cooler. Judging by the MSI R9 280X Twin Frozr I bought for another system, this should be a great card but I'm hoping the same quality translates over to the R9 290.

    Best product information seems to be MSI's site:

    http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R9-29....html#overview

    Best photos of card / backplate here:

    http://www.techpowerup.com/195809/ms...-pictured.html

    If anyone has any more details / spotted a review - please let me know!


    MSI Radeon R9 290 Lighting Edition

    This got shown recently as CES (e.g. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7625/m...tning-and-more) - features a triple slot / 'Tri Frozr' cooler - looks great but I'm guessing it'll be pretty pricy and not available for some time.

    There were hints of this last year when the PCB was photographed:

    http://videocardz.com/48270/msi-rade...g-pcb-pictured


    Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 'Windforce'

    I thought this might have been the killer R9 290 but I'm glad I didn't go with this in the end - this doesn't seem to be the same calibre as the elegant solution which features on the GeForce GTX 780Ti.

    The best information I found was from the German version of Tomshardware here: http://www.tomshardware.de/t/grafikkarten/

    The initial press samples had a bad contact with the 6 heat pipes on the card as they did not have the proper mounting solution in place that features on the retail cards. Interestingly, the site also re-visited this with a retail sample and found some improvement but not as much as I would have expected:

    http://www.tomshardware.de/gigabyte-...te-241469.html

    I'm somewhat disappointed that the retail cards continue to have temperatures in the 80oC region.

    Apparently this issue paused the mass-production of the card whilst the mounting solution was investigated so I'm not sure if this'll have a knock-on effect on the availability of the cards.


    ASUS Radeon R9-290 DirectCU II OC

    On initial look this would seem to be the daddy on paper - highest clock speed, great components, backplate (yup - you've guessed it, I have a thing for backplates!), custom PCB etc..

    Several reviews available (including foreign sites) but there is also a decent review here:

    http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages..._review,1.html

    The temperatures stay just below 80oC from most reviews and noise levels seem fairly reasonable.

    Just not sure if it really warrants the price premium - overclocking was a little disappointing compared with other cards; it seems circa 1150mhz is about the average and the Asus card doesn't appear to improve this by any great margin.


    Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X

    This card does have several reviews including some English ones (yay ) - e.g.:

    http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...-r9-290-tri-x/

    From what I have read, this is generally the best reviewed R9 290 custom card from all the sites I've seen to date in terms of temperatures, fan noise and consistency of performance (not beating the Asus card above but generally able to sustain performance better).

    Definitely a good bet for anyone in the market for one of these custom cards but be warned that the cooler extends over the end of the rear of the card adding an additional 1.5" to the length (12" total).


    XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dispersion (DD) 1000M

    Not loads of information on this one except for a Fudzilla preview here:

    http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33...000m-previewed

    Fairly decent temperature and noise and its killer feature is a glow-in-the-dark XFX logo...woohoo!

    I've read a few people's comments in blogs saying that XFX's RMA policy is pretty shocking though...not accepting legit requests etc...


    Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+

    Not huge amounts of information on this other than it uses a triple-fan cooler design akin to the Sapphire card above.

    Teaser screenshots here: http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33...-graphics-card

    Looks quite hawt.


    Pricing / availability / value for money

    Virtually zero availability! I cannot find any UK-based stores (other than OCuK and Scan) that have these even available for pre-order; very strange indeed!

    It's very difficult to make an accurate assessment of if the £358-£379.99 is worth it for the money (as some GTX 780's are going around the same price and are fairly issue-free in comparison) - a fair premium over the reference cards (I was hoping for circa £330-£345 price-wise).

    However, having said this, it isn't that bad when you consider the 'other three' effective options as I see them:

    1) An Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme III - excellent cooler, probably better than the above solutions (except for VRM temperature) judging by the round-up here:

    http://www.tomshardware.de/amd-radeo...te-241458.html (Chrome language translation FTW).

    Good luck trying to find it at a decent price in the UK here though - I've searched all over the place!

    Costs 100 euros when bought directly from Arctic Cooling themselves from their website - rip off!

    2) Full block watercooling / custom loop - £80-90 for the just the waterblock itself...ouch; and I thought £50 for a full block back in the 8800 GTX days was expensive! Definitely an option with this card given the amount of heat it generates

    3) A closed loop cooling solution with GPU adaptor (e.g. NZXT Kraken) - good example here:

    http://www.legitreviews.com/nzxt-kra...r9-290x_130344

    Probably less expensive than the custom loop but much more expensive than a custom air-cooled R9 290.

    Let me know your thoughts, information that you may have seen (especially the MSI cards )

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    I just read this elsewhere

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-m...dport-dvi-hdmi £358.80 Inc VAT 13th January

    I was hoping the £380 included BF4 but i'm sure I can find it for about £20 in Russian.
    I'm just hoping for some availability within the next week. I am going for it even thought pay day is still two weeks off.
    Fingers crossed.
    Last edited by Scainer; 08-01-2014 at 11:08 PM.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Hehe spent a bit of time writing it so wanted to share it out again

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by TerminatorUK View Post
    Hehe spent a bit of time writing it so wanted to share it out again
    mate, know you're new on here, but bumping your own thread less than one hour after creating it is somewhat premature. Unlike a number of your other posts which sound rather like someone trying to reach 20 posts this thread OP is seriously good and I imagine others will add to it.

    My starter for 10 - anandtech review of the sapphire R9 290x tri-x http://anandtech.com/show/7601/sapph...tom-cooled-290
    Last edited by ik9000; 09-01-2014 at 12:09 AM.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Just as a heads-up: none of the links in the first post work because you've just copied them from a forum post or something (they all just have a "..." in the URL)

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by Bambooz View Post
    Just as a heads-up: none of the links in the first post work because you've just copied them from a forum post or something (they all just have a "..." in the URL)
    some work, others don't. Something clearly not right.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by ik9000 View Post
    some work, others don't. Something clearly not right.
    ah I see you're now suspended for plagiarism. Thanks = retracted.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    I must admit I am also very interested in obtaining an MSI R9 290, but do not see the point until reviews surface. Is it not slightly unusual that the manufacturer have not provided cards for reviews pre-release?

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by edd677 View Post
    I must admit I am also very interested in obtaining an MSI R9 290, but do not see the point until reviews surface. Is it not slightly unusual that the manufacturer have not provided cards for reviews pre-release?
    They will have provided cards, reviews are coming in soon.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe



    Best way to cool the 290 that I've found. Even running a 290 on a single 120mm rad with a ~30cfm quiet fan gives you -20 degrees temp and near silence compared to reference.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by Butuz View Post
    Best way to cool the 290 that I've found. Even running a 290 on a single 120mm rad with a ~30cfm quiet fan gives you -20 degrees temp and near silence compared to reference.
    ..and costs a boatload more

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by Bambooz View Post
    ..and costs a boatload more
    but is a dang site thinner than the air-cooler custom fitting OCUK were offering. It made it a triple slot card. And weighed a lot. MOBO breaker in waiting IMO...

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    They will have provided cards, reviews are coming in soon.
    I would guess early next week then, since they are supposedly coming into stock at retail stores on the 13th :s

    Very interested to see if the MSI card can respond to Sapphire, who appear to have nailed this one.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    Quote Originally Posted by Scainer View Post
    I just read this elsewhere

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-m...dport-dvi-hdmi £358.80 Inc VAT 13th January

    I was hoping the £380 included BF4 but i'm sure I can find it for about £20 in Russian.
    I'm just hoping for some availability within the next week. I am going for it even thought pay day is still two weeks off.
    Fingers crossed.
    Nice one. Ordered!

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe

    IN Stock. For real?

    update...

    Now Pre-order due 20th Jan
    Last edited by Scainer; 14-01-2014 at 09:27 PM.

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    Re: Radeon R9 290 - Custom / Aftermarket coolers - some knowledge I've pooled togethe



    So I have a GFX card but no computer to put it in.... might not have been the best idea.
    But a hell of a good excuse to visit scan on Saturday...apart from the case i wanted is out of stock until the 30th
    Last edited by Scainer; 14-01-2014 at 09:33 PM.

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