TTL's R9 290X Review.

Wulfgar · October 26, 2013

Don't forget that heat output is really equal only to the amount of watts something consumes. Which in this case IS unfortunately making the Radeon 290x quite a room heater. There have been cards designed to run at those temperatures in the past, hell remember the 8800GT? That was a HOT little puppy. You could probably run a 290x 24x7 at 95C barring bad solder, and it would be fine. Personally, I would stick a water block on it. My next rig will have a custom loop anyways, so it's the perfect card to use for that.

Saladin · October 26, 2013

Regarding the thermal problem affecting your other components, i don't really see what people quoting that are trying to push >.>

The reference cooler is bad, yes, but it is also a blower style fan so all the hot air is expelled out of the case! Running @ 95c will therefore not affect your rig at all so that point is absolutely and utterly invalid.

@Saladin the air goes out of the case. 95c won't kill the card either, the only problem is that 95c is causing the card to throttle and it has more potential to draw out more performance, just not with the stock cooler - which is stupidly loud as well.

I understand the the cooler blows air out of the case, my point (in this as well as other treads) is that it will still heat up your case, no cooler is perfect and the load temps of the card will effect the temps in the case. I also realize that 95c is unlikely to kill the card, this doesn't mean that we wont see a higher marginal failure rate. My statement as to 'run away thermal events' is/was half a joke and half a point that the card is already clocked to the max out of the box, anything else you tried to do would risk nasty stuff happening if the card didn't throttle down (which it does). I have had hot cards in the past, they do effect case temps, you are correct that it isn't the end of the world but consistently high temps will effect components (both how they run and their like expectancy). My personal computer is used for two things, gaming and folding this means that it is at load much of the time. If I had a 290x in my case and used my computer as I normally do, the case and components would heat up and so would the smallish room my computer is in. I am not saying that the 290x is a bad card, I think that if you can manage the thermals it is a pretty good card, good not great. I am interested to see how the card does underwater and if companies like Asus can manage the thermals with non-reference designs (I am not particularly hopeful for air cooling).

Opsilon · October 26, 2013

Regarding the thermal problem affecting your other components, i don't really see what people quoting that are trying to push >.>

The reference cooler is bad, yes, but it is also a blower style fan so all the hot air is expelled out of the case! Running @ 95c will therefore not affect your rig at all so that point is absolutely and utterly invalid.

@Saladin the air goes out of the case. 95c won't kill the card either, the only problem is that 95c is causing the card to throttle and it has more potential to draw out more performance, just not with the stock cooler - which is stupidly loud as well.

Well, yes and no.

Sure blower coolers exhaust hot air outside of the case, but the card itself becomes hot, and so does the air around the card, but to be fair the surface area of the card is not that big, so it will not heat up the air that much.

The thing is if you have modern day GPU. you should have a modern day case that has good airflow, today that is not hard, there is s small amount of cases today that have "weak" airflow.

This thread has really dragged on, i mean there is nothing wrong with the card itself, and you can always make a custom fan curve, so you might never even see 80°C if you are willing to sacrifice some silence for that.

Personally if i don't really have to, i would not buy a reference/non-reference blower cooler card, i hate them, they are not quiet, and they are not good for the temperatures anyway, and in this day and age most of the time non-reference coolers on cards will ad maybe 10$ to the card itself ( don't factor in the non-reference PCB ) and i believe there should be no blower coolers today at all, but that's just me.

If i had unlimited money and had to choose a Titan, 780/780ti or 290x, they are all amazing cards, i would choose the one that has the best air cooler ( i believe Titan is out of the question, unless they release after-market versions ), i don't really care about the brand at all...