One of the best things we did for our Radeon R9 290 review was pop off AMD's reference cooler and attach Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III. Today, we show you how we did this, we dive deeper into the results, and ultimately recommend the aftermarket heat sink.
One of the biggest hits from AMD Radeon R9 290 Review: Fast And $400, But Is It Consistent? was our look at Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III. We knew that getting the Hawaii GPU running cooler and quieter would be the key to making it sing, and so there was one page of coverage dedicated to cooling done right.
Well, we're still waiting for partner cards to show up with third-party thermal solutions. So we thought we'd put together a more comprehensive walk-through of getting the Accelero Xtreme III working and measuring what it can do.
Obviously, if you spend $400 on a new Radeon R9 290 and immediately take it apart, your warranty is void. Also, remember that applying heat sinks using thermal adhesive creates a fairly permanent bond. There is no changing your mind once you go down this path. Then again, who wants to live with the reference cooler anyway? Just don't be that guy who rips a memory package off his PCB after gluing a heat sink to it.



Also, try and make your layout a standard so I don't have to keep buying after-market coolers or blocks. I can just move them from board to board.
But at the end of the day reviewers are gonna continue to mark down cards for these silly things for whatever reason. AMD might as well just make the reference coolers at least as good as SAPPHIRE's Dual-X so that everyone shuts up...
Also, try and make your layout a standard so I don't have to keep buying after-market coolers or blocks. I can just move them from board to board.
I've proofed this construction in my Corsair Obsidian 900D and it works as described, I had to turn on my case fans but only @800-900 rpm. To test a crossfire setup I would have to destroy two cards - sorry, but this was too expensive for me. One modified card is ok, but I cant kill all my samples
it seems the r9-290x is pretty much identical clock for clock to the 780ti... so putting a non-reference cooler onto it is almost mandatory; because when it's not temp throttling it's pacing nvidia's $700 monster.
Also, look that, that cooler is barely spinning. You can squish more of it, that would be even more noticable in performance gains!
Are all the Vendor's cards like this? If I remember correctly Sapphire used to allow (or still does) people to take the stock cooler off to attach a waterblock without it voiding the warranty.
VRM temps aren't reported for my GTX 560, it seems...
Switched to nVidia and have been happy. Currently running 660, 760 series in my machines. I did have to retire (put in parts box until I can take apart) an MSI 560Ti Twin Frozer when one of the twins had a bearing fail and quit spinning. The card still works, but not well, in my all air boxes. Gotta love the irony, though.
The kind of stuff required in this article is indicative of AMD's thrashing to compete; throw it out the door and pray. Pass.
it seems the r9-290x is pretty much identical clock for clock to the 780ti... so putting a non-reference cooler onto it is almost mandatory; because when it's not temp throttling it's pacing nvidia's $700 monster.
The BIOS was locked. Without increasing the core voltage my sample runs only 1175 max. It is a lottery which numbers you get
BTW:
A good tower case with a well-planned airflow can be a better ambient for VGA cards as an open bench table