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Watercooling the Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X OC Edition.

Tags:
  • Overclocking
  • Water Cooling
  • Crossfire
  • Sapphire
  • Radeon
Last response: in Overclocking
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October 10, 2014 9:54:32 AM

So I am wanting to watercool my entire system including a second GPU in Crossfire. Here is my plan so far:

1.Buy a Club 3D Royal Ace 290 and the EK full cover waterblock that fits it.
2. Buy 1 dual 120mm rad and 1 dual 140mm rad to add onto my Swifttech H220X that currently watercools my CPU
3. Outfit all 3 rads with Noctua NF-F12 fans for super quiet performance.

Here is the catch, I currently have the 290 Vapor-X OC edition and nobody makes a full cover waterblock that fits it. This leaves me with using a universal waterblock but then having to use alternate cooling solutions for my VRMs. Is the plate on the back of the Sapphire enough for this or do I need to also get some other VRM cooling solutions?

I want to do all of this watercooling partially for the challenge and for overclocking and I'm wondering if anyone has any idea of what type of monitor resolution I should be shooting for when I go to buy all of this (monitor included).

Side note: I currently have a i5 4690k running at 4.7 GHz however I'm concerned about it only having 16 PCI-e lanes, is this not an issue or should I be looking to get a Intel i5/i7 X series processor to accommodate the extra video cards?

Thanks for any advice in advance!

More about : watercooling sapphire radeon 290 vapor edition

a c 135 K Overclocking
October 10, 2014 10:50:46 AM

No current graphics card is limited by X8/X8 significantly. 1-2% perhaps.
Not worth worrying about.

For the challenge, I can see spending on advanced water cooling.
For performance or cost effectiveness, not so much.

If you are gaming on a single monitor, exclusive of a 4k monitor, your single card will be very effective.
If you will use 3 monitors or a 4k monitor for gaming, then plan on dual graphics cards.

Then, you can spend your money on cooling or overclocking R9 cards, or you can simply buy GTS970/GTX980 which run cool enough without exotic cooling.

Unless you have a golden chip, your 4.7oc is likely running with a vcore over 1.30v. I think that is too high for 24/7 operation, and usually unnecessary for gaming anyway. As an enthusiast and experimenter, that is ok. As a gamer who does not want problems, not so much.
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October 10, 2014 1:00:14 PM

geofelt said:
No current graphics card is limited by X8/X8 significantly. 1-2% perhaps.
Not worth worrying about.

For the challenge, I can see spending on advanced water cooling.
For performance or cost effectiveness, not so much.

If you are gaming on a single monitor, exclusive of a 4k monitor, your single card will be very effective.
If you will use 3 monitors or a 4k monitor for gaming, then plan on dual graphics cards.

Then, you can spend your money on cooling or overclocking R9 cards, or you can simply buy GTS970/GTX980 which run cool enough without exotic cooling.

Unless you have a golden chip, your 4.7oc is likely running with a vcore over 1.30v. I think that is too high for 24/7 operation, and usually unnecessary for gaming anyway. As an enthusiast and experimenter, that is ok. As a gamer who does not want problems, not so much.


Actually that was a typo, I have it at 4.6oc on core 1 then lower (to around 4.0) on cores 2,3, and 4. The vcore is at 1.340v and it's been stable for about a month now.

Back to the topic I would love to run at 4k but I'm not sure if two 290s will be enough even if overclocked and watercooled . My main concern is that I've grown to really love having games run at a pretty consistent 60fps, and I don't know if two will cut it. Unfortunately because I'm using a mATX board and case, I can't have more than two in the system. That's one of the other reasons why I want to watercool is because of the smaller enclosure it would be nice to keep the heat away from my other components. It also comes with the added benefit of not being as thick at the PCI-e slots so I can keep my audio card in there as well.

As for just buying a nvidia card, I rather like the 290 and am looking on building upon what I already have so throwing out the 290 seems like a waste considering I just bought it a couple months ago. The reason why I'm looking into these options is because I want to get a new monitor but I want to make sure my system can actually run it at native resolution first before dropping the money. Right now I'm just using my 32in 1080p TV as a monitor because it is what I have.

Just let me know what you think!

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a c 135 K Overclocking
October 10, 2014 1:33:14 PM

The main purpose of liquid cooling, either for a cpu or a graphics card is to keep the part cool enough so that you can squeeze a bit more performance out of it.
On the cpu, I think you are ok where you are at. Liquid cooling will keep the temperatures of a higher oc under control, but you will have to up the vcore past your current 1.34. My opinion, only, I think that is as high as you want or need to go.

On the graphics, a R9-290 is somewhat comparable to a GTX780. Check out benchmarks for either at 2560 x 1440, you will probably find performance acceptable.
You would be managing 3.6m pixels. If you change that to triple 1080P or 3 x 1920 x 1080, you are looking at close to twice that, hence the need for two cards. But, dual cards do not provide 2x the frame rate, and some games do not even support dual cards.
Add in the potential issues of stuttering and tearing.
I would try to run with the best single gpu card I could buy. Perhaps a GTX980ti will appear.
In the mean time, I think you are stuck with your r9-290.
Buy a second one, if you want on the used market. They are being dumped for various reasons. Those abandoning bitcoin mining or going to GTX970/980.
I would not spend big bucks on liquid cooling just to get another 5% out of them.
Triple cards do not seem to gain you much, and I would not pursue that direction.

Go ahead and buy your new monitor and see where you are.
there are some ebay sellers that will sell you a Korean QNIX 1440P or 30" 2560 x 1600 monitor at a very nice price delivered quickly.
Check the reviews, they seem quite good.
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