Asus R9 390X Strix DC3 8gb 8Pack Review.

[8 Pack]

ASUS are world renowned for there elite tier GPU offerings and in this respect are one of my favourites for a long time. Each generation I publish a review on these forums looking at the Matrix series in great detail and how well its looking and performing against similar GPU from others vendors.

When they asked me to look at a R9 390X 8gb Strix card I was interested to see how ASUS had implemented its new features into a mid-high end offering.

After taking the card out of the box I noticed the weight of the card. This is a very hefty and well built offering. It has a full back plate to stop any BGA issues, flexing of the PCB over time and assist in cooling. It has the new DC3 cooler with heat pipes in direct contact with the die which shifts heat away from the GPU much quicker, these heat pipes are thicker than on the older style DC2 cooler and are designed to dissipate more watts of heat. This new DC3 cooler has a three fan design which should help to maintain cool operation while running the fans at lower speed so creating less noise.

The looks of the entire card are those of a premium product and on initial inspection reminds me a lot of Matrix this in itself is a massive complement with the Matrix being one of the best looking cards available. The colour scheme is typical ASUS black and red in fitting with all there ROG and Pro gaming series motherboards. The card is two slot so can be run in multi card config with no issues at all.

Below we have pics of the card in my X99 testing Rig.







Now lets show some overclocking and performance figures.

Test System:
ASUS R9 390X Strix 8gb
Intel 5960x 4875mhz
ASUS Rampage 5 Xtreme
Kingston Predator DDR4
Superflower 8Pack 2000w PSU
Windows 64 Bit 8.1 with AMD 15.7 Drivers

Valley 1080p (Maxed out)



Heaven 1080p (Maxed out)



Firestrike



Firestrike Xtreme



Valley 4k (Maxed out)



Heaven 4k (Maxed out)



As we can see from the results the Overclocking on the R390X Strix on its stock cooler is very strong. 1200mhz Core and 1750mhz mems was very very rare on any 290X on air cooling with half the memory available here. This sample could run stable even at 4k resolutions with such high OC's again a real plus point and offering a good boost in performance.

The cooler is designed to run quiet with the fans at complete idle at no load and only needing to spin up to 48% output to keep the card under 75C while running at full overclocked frequency's. This meant the card was almost completely silent in operation even on a test bench so in a system I am sure almost totally inaudible. I further tested the cooler by forcing the fans to full just to see how low it could keep the card if purely temps and benching is your goal and the card never exceeded 62C. Which is a very low temp for air cooling on any R9 GPU and around 1 C better than my previous testing with solutions by Sapphire and MSI.

In conclusion I would recommend the ASUS R9 390X Strix to anyone in the market for a mid to high end AMD GPU. The card Overclocks well which boost performance, is very well built, looks great and runs cool and quiet.

 

[Gerard]

Same heat sink as the dcu 2 with 2 heat pipes that don't even touch the core =/

 

[nashathedog]

Same heat sink as the dcu 2 with 2 heat pipes that don't even touch the core =/

That there is why I won't be buying an Asus.

We saw great temps with there 290x's in reviews but in owners cases the real world results had a lot of owners getting very different results. just like many MSI's TF 290x owners did.

 

[Gerard]

That there is why I won't be buying an Asus.

We saw great temps with there 290x's in reviews but in owners cases the real world results had a lot of owners getting very different results. just like many MSI's TF 290x owners did.

Temperature and acoustics testing seems to be something that differs greatly because of a lot of factors. Just have to look around at reviews that virtually contradict each other, the gigabyte g1 980 ti some reviews have it as a very quiet card, others say it has a lot of fan noise and coil whine. Makes choosing a card based on it being quiet pretty hard.

 

[D1craig]

Same heat sink as the dcu 2 with 2 heat pipes that don't even touch the core =/

the fuss that was made about EVGA GTX 970 ACX2.0 would suggest this is going to cause the apocalypse

 

[Gerard]

the fuss that was made about EVGA GTX 970 ACX2.0 would suggest this is going to cause the apocalypse

Well asus last time around came out with the line of bs that the 2 that didn't touch were "auxiliary heatpipes" or something along those lines. Not sure why they don't integrate a copper plate so the heat goes to all the heatpipes.

 

[Elfmeister.]

If it's like the DCUIII, The three heatpipes which touch the core are the "Primary Heatpipes" each, drawing 70~100 watts for a combined 210~300 and the two remaining are "Secondary Heatpipes" each drawing 40~50 watts for a combined total 290~400 watts.

(There an image which backs this up online, I just cba to upload it and I can't hotlink.)

Apparently... but if the temps are within it's counterparts and it's doing it's job, is there a worry?

 

[Gripen90]

^^ I don't get it either ? So what if two heatpipes aren,'t touching the core ! they can't make the core any larger than it is, and adding a copperplate would not only eliminated the direct touch idea and may even be a worse cooling solution. The cooler as it is, is doing a great job keeping the core cool. So really I don't see what the fuzz above is all about.

 

[Gibbo]

If it's like the DCUIII, The three heatpipes which touch the core are the "Primary Heatpipes" each, drawing 70~100 watts for a combined 210~300 and the two remaining are "Secondary Heatpipes" each drawing 40~50 watts for a combined total 290~400 watts.

(There an image which backs this up online, I just cba to upload it and I can't hotlink.)

Apparently... but if the temps are within it's counterparts and it's doing it's job, is there a worry?

Exactly this, I've seen the Asus presentation which shows this, contact is only with the primary larger heatpipes. Would a copper plate give them more performance, who knows? But I've never had an issue with my 290X DC2 and the DC3 strix cooler seems an improvement cooling wise for sure.

 

[fs123]

Any comparison results with a 980 /980Ti ?

 

[Killer7xx]

^^ I don't get it either ? So what if two heatpipes aren,'t touching the core ! they can't make the core any larger than it is, and adding a copperplate would not only eliminated the direct touch idea and may even be a worse cooling solution. The cooler as it is, is doing a great job keeping the core cool. So really I don't see what the fuzz above is all about.

Yeah I agree, also the heatpipes all seem have decent contact with each other and the heatsink is one big block. The cooler probably has more cooling capacity than what is needed anyway so it's fine.

 

[Wilko_Dog]

Nice review , sweet card , always liked the look of the Asus coolers

 

[nashathedog]

Exactly this, I've seen the Asus presentation which shows this, contact is only with the primary larger heatpipes. Would a copper plate give them more performance, who knows? But I've never had an issue with my 290X DC2 and the DC3 strix cooler seems an improvement cooling wise for sure.

Plenty of people have had issues though, Sure some people are lucky and get a decent one but there's plenty of owners who's cards run like reference versions with regards to temps just like with MSI TF models. One of your own guy's at OCUK told me how you use one of those in an office PC and it sits at 94 degrees all day long, After having my new card doing this after all the reviews claiming it wouldn't even hit 80 unless overclocked or in a poor circulation system I researched on the web and found more Asus owners having the problem than MSI owners so yeah some people are lucky and get a decent card but plenty of us don't. That makes it a risk.
These may be fine I don't know until we get people running them inside rigs reporting in but the DCUII's and TFIV's certainly weren't fine for a lot of people and it just seems stupid that they'd leave themselves open to having the same doubts thrown around by not fixing it. Promoting it as a three fan five pipe cooling system sounds great until you realise it's only three but apparently you don't need to worry due to the other two only being "auxiliary heatpipes". ie: even though they're there they're not worth a Tom Tank. Plus as the pic shows one of those pipes not being touched appears to be one of the three thicker pipes and it goes to the central area of the sink. That means it's touching two thick and one thin leaving one thick and one thin untouched. Thankfully AMD seem to have improved temps when comparing Grenada to Hawaii.

EDIT: It say's two of them are 10 mm pipes. Which I'm not sure.

http://www.asus.com/uk/Graphics_Cards/STRIXR9390XDC38GD5GAMING/

 

[Gerard]

Plenty of people have had issues though, Sure some people are lucky and get a decent one but there's plenty of owners who's cards run like reference versions with regards to temps just like with MSI TF models. One of your own guy's at OCUK told me how you use one of those in an office PC and it sits at 94 degrees all day long, After having my new card doing this after all the reviews claiming it wouldn't even hit 80 unless overclocked or in a poor circulation system I researched on the web and found more Asus owners having the problem than MSI owners so yeah some people are lucky and get a decent card but plenty of us don't. That makes it a risk.
These may be fine I don't know until we get people running them inside rigs reporting in but the DCUII's and TFIV's certainly weren't fine for a lot of people and it just seems stupid that they'd leave themselves open to having the same doubts thrown around by not fixing it. Promoting it as a three fan five pipe cooling system sounds great until you realise it's only three but apparently you don't need to worry due to the other two only being "auxiliary heatpipes". ie: even though they're there they're not worth a Tom Tank. Plus as the pic shows one of those pipes not being touched appears to be one of the three thicker pipes and it goes to the central area of the sink. That means it's touching two thick and one thin leaving one thick and one thin untouched. Thankfully AMD seem to have improved temps when comparing Grenada to Hawaii.

EDIT: It say's two of them are 10 mm pipes. Which I'm not sure.

http://www.asus.com/uk/Graphics_Cards/STRIXR9390XDC38GD5GAMING/

No doubt It would give better temps if they all touched. Asus are advertising this dcu 3 like its all new, in reality its got 3 different fans and a new shroud and that's it.

Stock availability of the ti version is laughable, as is the price premium slapped onto it

 

[Wizzfizz]

TBH avoid Asus, as they are quite literally normal spec'd cards, with a slap on premium, hence the reviews. Not just that, their CS is pants

 

[Gerard]

TBH avoid Asus, as they are quite literally normal spec'd cards, with a slap on premium, hence the reviews. Not just that, their CS is pants

These ones are a bit different, entirely automated assembly process and a custom board. Their warranty is pretty ass though.

 

[ubersonic]

Same heat sink as the dcu 2 with 2 heat pipes that don't even touch the core =/

This FUD has been discussed before, having three/five pipes touching the core plus the other two touching those three will work just as well as having all five touching a plate touching the core (a la MSI/etc) if not better.

 

[8 Pack]

Exactly this, I've seen the Asus presentation which shows this, contact is only with the primary larger heatpipes. Would a copper plate give them more performance, who knows? But I've never had an issue with my 290X DC2 and the DC3 strix cooler seems an improvement cooling wise for sure.

I have never had one issue either with this cooler or a DC2. Its a solid performing card simple as. 62C with fan at full 1200/1750 is great performance, the same or better than the rest.

 

[Gerard]

This FUD has been discussed before, having three/five pipes touching the core plus the other two touching those three will work just as well as having all five touching a plate touching the core (a la MSI/etc) if not better.

Whatever you say. Some reviews of this card have it hitting around 82c at load as well which isn't any better than the reference blower.

 

[ubersonic]

Whatever you say. Some reviews of this card have it hitting around 82c at load as well which isn't any better than the reference blower.

Yes it is because the reference blower did 95c at load running much louder and delivering less performance.

People like you don't seem to understand this cooler/card is supposed to run hotter than some others because it's fan settings are set up for silence, if it had a more aggressive fan profile it would run cooler. It's cooling performance is fine hence why it can cool better than a reference blower at much lower volume). Hell 8pack said it was running at 62C overclocked too 1200/1750 with the fans on full (which would probably still be quieter than a reference blower under load).

My MSI 980ti Gaming is the same, it hits high 70's while running and is still almost silent.