We're using Metro: Last Light for our thermal benchmarks. This should be a good representation of a high-end graphics workload. As a bonus, it's incredibly repeatable and easy to loop over and over through the built-in tool.
After publishing Does Radeon R9 290X Behave Any Differently In A Closed Case?, we decided to test these cards on an open bench table and in a closed case, since we found that dropping them into the right enclosure helped lower temperatures thanks to optimized airflow.
| Model | Idle | Gaming, Open-Air Bench | VRM | Gaming, Closed Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290 | 32 °C | 72 °C | 78 °C | 60-71 °C |
| Gigabyte GV-R929OC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC | 34 °C | 72 °C | 77 °C | 73-74 °C |
| Radeon R9 290 Reference + Arctic Accelero Extreme III | 30 °C | 68 °C | 90 °C | 72 °C |
| Radeon R9 290 Reference + NZXT Kraken G10 + X40 | 28 °C | 49 °C | 66 °C | 49 °C |
| Model | Idle | Gaming, Open-Air Bench | VRM | Gaming, Closed Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asus R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 R9 290X DirectCU II OC | 34 °C | 76 °C | 92 °C | 84-85 °C |
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X | 35 °C | 73 °C | 85 °C | 70-72 °C |
| Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC Press Sample | 34 °C | 84 °C | 86 °C | 83 °C |
| Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC Mass Production | 34 °C | 83 °C | 87 °C | 81 °C |
| HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo | 35 °C | 78 °C | 70 °C | 81-82 °C |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | 34 °C | 76 °C | 73 °C | 75-76 °C |
Temperature Graphs
These graphs slow how the temperatures change over time, influenced by the heat sink, the fan, and the firmware's fan profile.
Asus' R9 290X DirectCU II OC has a bit of a problem; its cooler was actually designed for the larger GK110 GPU on its GeForce GTX 780 Ti board. You can see this in the image below, where two of the heat pipes don't tough Hawaii at all, and two others make partial contact.
Sapphire solves this with a group of three heat pipes that better fit AMD's GPU. The result is made clear in our testing.
Radeon R9 290 Temperatures




Radeon R9 290X Temperatures





- Cooling The Radeon R9 290 And 290X
- Technical Specifications
- Dimensions And Weight
- Gaming Power Consumption
- Gaming Performance
- Temperatures
- Noise And Fan Speed
- Video Comparison
- Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290
- Gigabyte GV-R929OC-4GD R9 290 Windforce OC
- Radeon R9 290 + Arctic Accelero Extreme III
- Asus R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 R9 290X DirectCU II OC
- HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo
- Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC
- MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G
- Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X


I would like to know this more precisely please... I can't found any rage in my articles, only a chip with a very high temperature density and a lot of unusable coolers because the engineers were not able to build a matching cooler for this cards. This high density will be a global problem for all next-gen chips too. Without a vapor chamber this won't work.
Coupled with other recent reviews, Sapphire's Tri-X OC series looks to be great cards, especially when you make a custom fan curve to further reduce idle and load noise.
I can not wait to see the 20nm updates, especially if AMD gets around to pulling a Titan with their reference coolers!
I would like to know this more precisely please... I can't found any rage in my articles, only a chip with a very high temperature density and a lot of unusable coolers because the engineers were not able to build a matching cooler for this cards. This high density will be a global problem for all next-gen chips too. Without a vapor chamber this won't work.
Coupled with other recent reviews, Sapphire's Tri-X OC series looks to be great cards, especially when you make a custom fan curve to further reduce idle and load noise.
I can not wait to see the 20nm updates, especially if AMD gets around to pulling a Titan with their reference coolers!
It is nice that a company has paid attention and we have a solution that doesn't involve a series of carefully engineered zip ties...
A good PSU has a lot of primary caps inside to compensate this peaks without any problem. The question should better be: What's about the life-span of this caps under this conditions? This is one of the reasons to buy a PSU with good and not with so-called "bad" caps. If you buy cheap you buy twice...
But Nvidia is not much better. I've checked this in another article:
A good PSU has a lot of primary caps inside to compensate this peaks without any problem. The question should better be: What's about the life-span of this caps under this conditions?
But Nvidia is not much better. I've checked this in another article:
FormatC your avatar gave me cancer...
Ok, use 8x MSAA to prevent you before edge flares