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Looking for a 'blower' style card - £250 budget

jumeeno

jumeeno

jumeeno

Associate
Joined
20 Nov 2011
Posts
449
Hi all,

Just bought a new SilverStone FT04 case and transported my 3570K rig over - in terms of temps it's fantastic! Anyway, looking to upgrade my current HD6850 (yes I know, but card was always coming straight after new case!) and SilverStone suggest a blower-style card.

As an example of this style of cooler, are we talking about something like this - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-093-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1982?

Please could people throw some alternate suggestions my way please? I'd probably prefer to stay AMD, but am not adverse to Nvidia, and have a maximum budget of £250.

Thank you :)
 
jumeeno said:
Hi all,

Just bought a new SilverStone FT04 case and transported my 3570K rig over - in terms of temps it's fantastic! Anyway, looking to upgrade my current HD6850 (yes I know, but card was always coming straight after new case!) and SilverStone suggest a blower-style card.

As an example of this style of cooler, are we talking about something like this - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-093-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1982?

Please could people throw some alternate suggestions my way please? I'd probably prefer to stay AMD, but am not adverse to Nvidia, and have a maximum budget of £250.

Thank you :)
Click to expand...

Add £50 more and buy a R9 290. :D
 
£240 seems a lot for a 7950 these days - are there likely to be 280X's out with this style of cooler shortly?

I'd love a 290, and understand the cooler is the right style... but have just heard bad things about the noise. As my new case airflow is excellent, is the card likely to be okay?
 
The 290 will be fine.

If you have good case airflow though I would be less fussy about having a blower type card tbh.

I cant believe the price of that 7950!! You can get a 280x which is a 7970 (which incidentally is largely more expensive even though its the same as the 280x) for less!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with BattleField 4 PC Game Included £319.99
1 x HIS Radeon R9 280X iPower IceQ X2 Boost 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with BattleField 4 PC Game Included £245.99
1 x OcUK Geforce GTX 770 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £236.99
Total : £812.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).




I put the 770 in there because of the cooler but 2gb vram has started to show minor limitations on AAA games but this may not be an issue for you really.

Personally the 280x is your best bet, you may find a blower style elsewhere or even secondhand.

if you can spend the extra then the 290 is your best bet at its price point.
 
Last edited:
Something Else said:
The 290 will be fine.

If you have good case airflow though I would be less fussy about having a blower type card tbh.
Click to expand...

Good to hear, I'd rather go with the more common cooler (as in the majority of custom cards).

Any idea when the 290 custom cards are likely to hit, along with expected prices? Sorry to ask, it's just I hadn't considered one until Panos mentioned it!
 
jumeeno said:
Good to hear, I'd rather go with the more common cooler (as in the majority of custom cards).

Any idea when the 290 custom cards are likely to hit, along with expected prices? Sorry to ask, it's just I hadn't considered one until Panos mentioned it!
Click to expand...

After new year apparently :(
 
rids57 said:
They must be running short of stock, the HIS was about £40 cheaper a week or so ago
Click to expand...

Wasn't that the deal of the day offer?

My two cents here:

When trying the reference cooler for the 290x, i didnt find it any noisier than my gtx580 pny or 6950, both which had blower designs. Though i only had the reference cooler on for a few hours of testing and benching, I found it was either a little hot and not noisy or not hot and noisy but never both.
 
The 290 wont be the most quiet of cards but blower type heatsinks never are. I do belive the stories of how loud they are is a bit exagerated as a lot of users report that it is not as bad as they expected
 
I have an unlocked 290 and with the fan over 50% it is very noisy you will need a very good airflow case to keep it under 90c with the fan under 50%.
 
iron_monkey said:
I have an unlocked 290 and with the fan over 50% it is very noisy you will need a very good airflow case to keep it under 90c with the fan under 50%.
Click to expand...
Here's my results and settings used for my unlocked 290. My PC case on the floor around 1 meter away from me so the 55% fanspeed is not that bad...I can hear it slightly when I have my speakers at normal level, but it was not to the level of intrusive. I would however agree that 55% would be to loud for people who place their PC on their desk right next to them at earlevel.
Marine-RX179 said:
So...I had a bit more play today on the VTX (unlocked) 290x, and played around with fanspeed and overclocking a bit, trying to find the best balance between voltage/temp, overclock and fanspeed, and I have settled on using 1100/1500 for now, which required a slight bump in voltage of +30mV (upped from 1250mV to 1280mV), and change the fan profile to speed up sooner at a lower temp (70C at 50%, 80C at 55%, 90C at 60%)...and here's the results of running Heaven on 1920 res, 4xAA, Extreme Tesselation for 45mins, and it never went above 55% fan speed and 81C:
8aa.png
af0.png

My room is around 18-19C.

This should do me nicely till my Gelid Icy Vision Rev2 arrive :D I had a look on its manual in advance...the installation seem straightfoward enough.
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/guides/Rev.2 Icy Vision_installation_manual.pdf
Click to expand...
 
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