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R9 290 PowerColor Ref Card - Aftermarket coolers?

Antowns

Antowns

Antowns

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Joined
14 Feb 2012
Posts
453
Hi all,

Just got a R9 290 (non X) and I've found the temps hit upwards of 80 which is probably OK but the card fan is going mad. Any suggestions? I thought about replacing the cooler?
 
The concern regarding the Arctic Accelero Xtreme IV is that it doesn't have heatsink directly for the memory and vrm, but is only relying on the backplate and its fine for "backside" cooling, which I don't think is enough, especially if you were planning on overclocking.

You can get a Gelid Icy Vision Rev 2 for around £30, and the Gelid Solutions AMD R290/290X Enhancement Kit (heatsinks for vrm) for around £4 and it would do the job fine at a fraction of the Arctic's price. My Gelid Icy Vision Rev 2 plus 3rd party sinks is able to keep my 290x's 1080/1375MHz stock voltage with GPU temp at around 63-68C, and VRM1 temp under 100C even play playing games Sleeping Dogs with SuperSampling (using higher res than 1080 and SuperSampling is known to stress the vrm1 much more than just MSAA on 1080 res). VRM1 temp is generally below 80C when playing games without SuperSampling enabled.
 
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I've been running my 290's with Accelero Hybrid II's for the past few weeks, which have the same heatsink as the Xtreme IV, and I've been very pleasantly surprised with how well it's performed. My VRM temperatures have gone up by just under 10C compared to the stock cooler (so up to about 75C), with the exception of VRM1 on my second card, which goes up to 90C on Sleeping Dogs with High AA preset at 5760x1080. Nothing else I've found gets this high, most games get to 85C or so. My second card's heatsink is the one sandwiched between the two cards, so it doesn't get as much air as the other card, hence the higher VRM1 temp so that's the one I monitor.

I'm currently waiting for two Gelid Enhancement VRM kits to see adding them can dip my VRM temperatures at all. No idea if it'll work, but I thought for a couple of quid it was worth a shot.

I would say that the Accelero "backside" cooler works perfectly fine for cooling the VRM's and memory as if it can run fine in a case with two cards close together, it will be easily good enough for a single card. Can't speak for how well it copes with overclocking, I haven't tried overclocking my cards as I haven't found anything they struggle on.

I've run Acceleros on my old 7970 and now my 290's, and they are as close to silent as I can image a powerful GPU getting. I would suggest getting one as I don't think you'll be disappointed. I haven't had an Gelid Icy so can't speak about those.
 
Cheers for the reply guys, aside from the temps, I'm fairly sure it's throttling the performance of the card, has anyone seen this?
 
Thaifood said:
I got a gelid which I will be fixing into a 290. So will let you know
Click to expand...

You might need a VRM kit as I had to zip tie the standard one down, after getting Gelid' conversion kit I knocked off about 20c-30c on my VRM 1 temperature, sits at 75c-90c instead of 95c-110c. I am happy with the cooler, especially now the VRM's are below 100c.
 
Doogles said:
You might need a VRM kit as I had to zip tie the standard one down, after getting Gelid' conversion kit I knocked off about 20c-30c on my VRM 1 temperature, sits at 75c-90c instead of 95c-110c. I am happy with the cooler, especially now the VRM's are below 100c.
Click to expand...
Yea the vrm1 sink that comes with the Gelid Icy Vision Rev2 cooler is not a direct fit for the 290/290x and the two screw holes on the sink don't align with the two holes on the PCB. I got the Alpenföhn sink pack, but even that vrm1 sink is not the right alignment on the holes for screwing down. But because the vrm1 sink is too tall, I have to sand it down, and now I just have it sandwiched between the cooler's headsink and the vrm1 with the pressure from the heatsink pushing the vrm1 sink down toward the vrm1 with no screw :D

I would love to give the Gelid Solutions AMD R290/290X Enhancement Kit a try, but since I already got acceptable temp, not too sure if I would bother to take off the cooler again :p
 
Not sure if this will apply to you as you seem to be going for an air cooler, but Powercolor revised their PCB recently to a non-reference design. You can tell by the number R29FA just above the PCI-E connector, plus some VRMs and capacitors are in different places. The reference design PCB has R29F only. Apparently VTX3D and Club3D are also using the new PCB.

As it turns out, there are almost no manufacturers making reference PCB cards anymore, and as such aftermarket coolers may not fit properly. This is most certainly true of 90% of water blocks. :( Thankfully though, EK are making a water block for this new PCB. :)
 
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