Temperatures And Noise
Thermals
The Asetek closed-loop liquid cooler does a fairly good job, though it's only equipped with a 120 mm radiator. A peak GPU temperature of 65 °C is admirable, particularly considering that we couldn't push a single Radeon R9 290X below 50 °C in our aftermarket cooling project.
Acoustics
We're using a calibrated studio-quality microphone for all sound level measurements. It's positioned at a 90° orientation 50 cm away from each graphics card. Results are collected after each card hits its peak operating temperature in our gaming benchmark.
Although 45 dB(A) is clearly audible, the Radeon R9 295X2 is significantly quieter than any competing setup, while the Radeon HD 6990 and R9 290X in CrossFire blow you right out of the room. AMD clearly put effort into improving the experience it conveys, and we appreciate that.
Sound Level Videos
Lastly, let's compare three generations of dual-GPU graphics cards from AMD in videos.