We're in the process of testing Radeon R9 290X cards from AMD's board partners, and were curious how they all fare in a closed chassis. Corsair's deluxe Obsidian 900D offers lots of airflow, so we dusted off a more mainstream $80 case to test with.
We received plenty of feedback about our work with AMD's Radeon R9 290X in an open test bed, despite careful attention to maintaining constant room temperatures. After following up with some measurements in Corsair's well-ventilated Obsidian 900D, I found that some cards fared even better inside an enclosure than out. Eager for more information, I sought out a mainstream chassis to continue the collection of data.
I picked Enermax's Fulmo ST, which isn't available from Newegg right now, but does show up elsewhere under $100. That seemed like a good price on a practical mid-tower case. Realism was the goal, so I avoided big towers and some of the excessively cheap solutions that show up in our System Builder Marathon (I tend to think if you're buying an expensive graphics card, you're probably putting it into a nice chassis).
In order to create more of a cooling challenge, I used an overclocked AMD FX-8350 running at 4.4 GHz with a closed-loop liquid cooler and fan running at a constant 800 RPM. Using this set-up, the path warm air from the graphics card would normally take is largely blocked. Adding a second 800 RPM exhaust fan in the back of the case helps with circulation, though.
The platform's fan control was set as conservatively as possible, spinning the coolers around 600 RPM. This configuration should give us an idea of whether AMD's latest is viable in smaller enclosures (or not).
All of the cards are set to Quiet Mode, since the third-party cooling solutions do a much better job of maintaining clock rates than AMD's reference effort.
| CPU | AMD FX-8350 (Piledriver) Overclocked to 4.4 GHz |
|---|---|
| Cooling | Corsair H100i, 2 x 120 mm Fans (800 RPM) |
| Motherboard | Asus Sabertooth FX990 Rev. 2.0 |
| RAM | 2 x 4 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 |
| Storage | Adata Premier Pro SP900 Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB |
| Case | Enermax Fulmo ST |
| Power Supply | Enermax Revolution X't 530 W, 80 PLUS Gold |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate x64 |
| Drivers | AMD Catalyst 13.12 GeForce 331.82 |
| Benchmarks | Metro: Last Light Bioshock Infinite Battlefield 4 (Single-Player) Crysis 3 (DirectX 11) |
Reference card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Windforce OC
Asus R9 290X DirectCU II
Gigabyte R9 290X Windforce OC
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X
Let's take a look at how these cards perform in tight confinement.
Create a new thread in the Reviews comments forum about this subject
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12 Hidebemused_fred , January 9, 2014 1:56 AMAhhh, finally: R9-290x cards with consistent performance and bearable accoustics.
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7 Hidesolix , January 9, 2014 1:50 AMThis surprises me a bit after Tom's 280x roundup where the Asus DCII really came out nicely with regards to both acoustics and temps conceding in clocks to the faster but louder toxic card. Obviously this is a different chip with different properties, but fundamentally you'd expect mostly similar results with respect to TDP.
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12 Hidebemused_fred , January 9, 2014 1:56 AMAhhh, finally: R9-290x cards with consistent performance and bearable accoustics.
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0 HideNovuake , January 9, 2014 2:00 AMOK so the reason why this card is not performing through the roof
owerTune is keeping thermals AND power consumption in check.Now for a nice overclock to negate that effect and the 290 and 290x will perform through the roof.Wish I could afford one now...
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2 Hidesolix , January 9, 2014 2:15 AMTo my point, and sorry for the double post:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-280x-third-party-round-up,3655.htmlPage 12This operates on the assertion that the Toxic cooler for the 280x is quite similar to the 290x Tri-x, but that is conjecture. I'm sure there are subtle differences (though maybe those make all the difference in the case of the 290x).Page 6Subjectively the Asus sounds quietest to me in terms of the kind of noise it produces.Page 4,5Toxic is a good 8db louder as measured (and almost the loudest) but middle of the pack in relation to all the cards with regards to temps, and slightly cooler in temps than DCII and windforce by a few degrees.Page 2The Toxic is about 7% higher in clocks.The differences in the 290x are much more pronounced with the DCII and windforce losing in both aspects of temperature and noise. The open bench tests were more similar to the 280x tests which I assume were open bench, but the DCII and WF still came out ahead in terms of noise even in that test. Sapphire must really have reworked their Toxic cooler or this is a new design we didn't see on the 280x cards.
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3 Hidesx57 , January 9, 2014 2:24 AMI expected much more from asus. Very good article.
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-2 Hidesx57 , January 9, 2014 2:34 AMI expected much more from asus. Very good article.
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0 Hidewest7 , January 9, 2014 2:51 AMi think it should be included vrm temps in the article well i have hd7950 vapor-x the it have the worst vrm cooling i've seen temps in gaming is around 80°C on stock clocks(950/1250) and i'm getting this temps on very cooled case (cm haf912 with tree fans 2x200mm 1x140mm) so it will be very nice if you add vrm temps in your next review
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0 Hidede5_Roy , January 9, 2014 4:34 AMis that an optical illusion or the gigabyte gtx 780 card is about to succumb to gravity... the asus card seems to be bending a bit as well...
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1 Hidevertexx , January 9, 2014 4:49 AMGood article. I have also found from experience that good case airflow (i.e. well thought out directional airflow - not miscellaneous fans all over the place) can be much better at facilitating GPU cooling performance than open (and stagnant) air.MSI has IMO the best cooler out there in its Gaming series - I think they've struck the best balance of price, cooling performance & noise reduction of any card with this generation. I hope to see one in the round-up.On the CLC, do you have that setup pulling air into the case or exhausting out?
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4 Hidesunshine240sx , January 9, 2014 4:58 AMWhere can I get a "Gigabyte GTX 290X"?
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0 Hidechesteracorgi , January 9, 2014 5:26 AMA computer case has two essential functions: housing the components and cooling them. The design of radial fans forcing airflow through a small aperture in the rear of the case is inherently less efficient (like pissing through a pinhole with the concomitant splash-back) than venting heat to the case interior. A well designed case will properly vent the heat and provide a good environment for the computer, a poorly designed case will trap heat and prematurely burn through components.I stress tested a GTX 470 with a shroud and radial fan and it ran about 20 C hotter than the (very same) GPU with a (dual axial fan) Zalman 2000 F under identical conditions in a Corsair 600 T case. Shame on AMD (and ASUS) for their design and the laziness of Gigabyte for being cheap.
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4 HideYuka , January 9, 2014 5:26 AMWell, Sapphire doing an excellent work again. Although, they do have 3 fans for cooling, compared to 2 for Asus.Still, both make great purchases I'd say.Cheers!
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0 Hide_Vass , January 9, 2014 5:45 AMwindforce gtx 290x lel. you made a mistake there sir
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0 HideAmdlova , January 9, 2014 5:51 AMthe heat is on! remember when some one fry a egg on geforce now is time to AMD
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0 Hideelbert , January 9, 2014 6:07 AMThis should have been expected. Sapphire has 10 years in the video card business over the other 2. Wonder how Sapphire would do against XFX?
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1 Hidewussupi83 , January 9, 2014 6:09 AMIgor , I have to be honest, I think you did excellent due diligence for the article and compiled very good test results for us, thank you. However, reading the article gave me a really strong sense that you personally don't like the 290 series. I felt that was a little out of Tom's normal down-the-middle stance on reviews that has kept me a consistent almost-daily reader here for over a decade. Anyway, that's just my opinion. Thanks again for the great information.
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1 Hideddpruitt , January 9, 2014 6:09 AMThe 1ms power consumption numbers look reasonable, albeit powertune shouldn't use such a fine setting to adjust clocks and fan speed. It would be interesting to overlay frame completion times with the high res power graph to see if anything else is going on there.
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1 Hidedark_knight33 , January 9, 2014 7:38 AMI have both of these cards. The Sapphire is a tremendously better built, better packaged card. At 100% fan speed, the Asus card isn't so much quieter as it is just a different tone. I actually prefer the Toxic. That said, I also paid >$100 more for the toxic card than I did the asus card.Quote:This surprises me a bit after Tom's 280x roundup where the Asus DCII really came out nicely with regards to both acoustics and temps conceding in clocks to the faster but louder toxic card. Obviously this is a different chip with different properties, but fundamentally you'd expect mostly similar results with respect to TDP.
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0 HideChetou , January 9, 2014 7:45 AMWhy Quiet mode? I can't think of anyone buying these cards and not running them to their fullest potential.
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-1 Hideheydan , January 9, 2014 7:52 AMYou put Gigabyte "GTX" 290X Windforce OC by the way






owerTune is keeping thermals AND power consumption in check.Now for a nice overclock to negate that effect and the 290 and 290x will perform through the roof.Wish I could afford one now...