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This ^^ 
 
I can't stress enough how much of a difference having a Kraken G10 makes for Hawaii. It's quite literally jaw dropping.

I plugged a 4 pin floppy connector into a CD aux connector on a sound card when I was quite young. The blue smoke that made the sound card work escaped.

So, I've seen used reference r9 290s listed on eBay for as low as $200 USD. I imagine that price will drop even further when AMDs next generation of cards come out.
 
I'm wondering if anyone has experience a failed 290. I know these things run extremely hot, and I'm just wondering if that would affect the longevity of the cards.
 
So is buying a used 290 worth it? You could always replace that terrible reference cooler with an aftermarket, which is what I'm considering.

It's fine, and the bottleneck will be pretty small in most games.

Not really. PCIe 1.0 X16 is the same as PCIe 3.0 X4 (or PCIe 2.0 X8), which isn't severely bottlenecking a 270 any time soon. You'll be perfectly fine.