AMD's latest Catalyst drivers override AMD's firmware settings, resulting in the Quiet and Uber modes performing pretty much the same (at least according to the results of my maddeningly-long time in the lab with these cards). The only difference I found was that the air-cooled card reached a lower idle state in Quiet mode, and I'm using that more conservative idle state in these power numbers.

The system with our air-cooled Radeon R9 290 only idles down to 102 W with the Uber firmware selected. Overclocked, the air-cooled card could have dropped to 105 W if we were using the Quiet BIOS and our more aggressive clock rate settings. Conversely, VisionTek's CryoVenom R9 290 doesn't exhibit the same behavioral difference.

The overclocked air-cooled card's higher idle temperature can be partly attributed to the fact that its power consumption doesn't drop as low with Uber mode engaged. I checked, and at the same clock rates, Quiet mode would have allowed it to drop to 22 °C over-ambient.
Overclocked, the retail card's lower temperature comes from a higher fan speed that adversely affects noise.

Less thermal throttling allows VisionTek's CryoVenom R9 290 to gain 2% performance over the air-cooled board running at the exact same frequencies. It also enjoys 6%-higher overclocked performance.

Using the stock Radeon R9 290 as a baseline, we find that the CryoVenom can improve efficiency by up to 19% under the effects of overclocking. It's even 11% more efficient than the stock card, using the same BIOS, at stock clock rates. Lower temperatures do wonders for efficiency.
- Can A Liquid-Cooled Radeon R9 290 Be Affordable?
- CryoVenom R9 290: Meet The Card
- Test Hardware And Benchmark Settings
- Overclocking
- Results: 3DMark
- Results: Tomb Raider And F1 2012
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Far Cry 3
- Results: Metro: Last Light
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Making A Value Case For Water-Cooling A GPU
Go look at the price of the acrylic/nickel block and the backplate. Assume they're stockpiling the leftover air coolers at some cost and will sell them in the far future for about the cost of stockpiling them.
AMD recently released these to distribution by manufacturing partners, so maybe they can now get them bare. But they couldn't when these were launched, and this is a launch card. Since I don't know the full details of AMD's recent move, I cannot comment further.
In the USA and Canada, MSI and XFX still allow owners of their cards to install aftermarket cooling solutions WITHOUT voiding the original manufacturer's warranty. (Both have supported doing so for many years.) Should the owner of an MSI or XFX card with an aftermarket cooler installed on it ever need service for that card, the original-equipment cooling solution must be reinstalled prior to returning it for service.
XFX offers a 2-year warranty on its regular R9-series cards, and a lifetime warranty on Black Edition cards. Meanwhile, MSI offers a 3-year warranty on all its R9-series cards. So should the owner of an MSI or XFX R9-290/290X card want to use the EK solution mentioned in the article, that owner would still be fully covered by the respective manufacturer's warranty.
Do you have links? I wish I'd known about MSI and XFX's exceptional policies, I would turn to them for more samples!
Actually AMD designs the cards, and TSMC manufactures the GPUs which the distributors, Sapphire included, buy the add their heatsinks and branding to.