AMD R9 290 (Non-X, Pro, etc) Owners Club

[Geckovich]

I hate to say it but despite my earlier comments about noise I'm really being swayed by the cost vs another GTX 780 and the potential of mantle and trueaudio.

Can the reference cards have the voltage tweaked? More importantly has anyone successfully undervolted to reduce noise?

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Fired up my PC tonight to the unpleasant surprise of my Antec Kuhler radiator leaking over my 290. Pulled the power and whipped the card out. It has a fair bit of liquid on the back of the pcb. PC was loaded to desktop when I noticed the temps seemed very high.

Have dried the card and put it in the airing cupboard, hopefully it's not knackered

Hopefully it'll be fine. I've had cards get a bit wet while leak testing and once dry they were ok. Hopefully Antec were sensible with the liquid in their coolers.

 

[Chrisoldinho]

I hate to say it but despite my earlier comments about noise I'm really being swayed by the cost vs another GTX 780 and the potential of mantle and trueaudio.

Can the reference cards have the voltage tweaked? More importantly has anyone successfully undervolted to reduce noise?

The noise really isnt that bad, my case is sound deadened and I purposely wanted to build a quiet PC. I can honestly say that in nearly all circumstances it doesn't make a peep, it's only when temps exceed 75 that the fan spins up to an audible level, anything sub 40% on the fan IMO is fine and this is good for nearly 90 degrees.

 

[Geckovich]

The noise really isnt that bad, my case is sound deadened and I purposely wanted to build a quiet PC. I can honestly say that in nearly all circumstances it doesn't make a peep, it's only when temps exceed 75 that the fan spins up to an audible level, anything sub 40% on the fan IMO is fine and this is good for nearly 90 degrees.

Cheers for the input, I guess I really need to weigh up possible noise and £100 more in my wallet vs GTX 780

 

[SiDeards73]

Hopefully it'll be fine. I've had cards get a bit wet while leak testing and once dry they were ok. Hopefully Antec were sensible with the liquid in their coolers.

I'm fairly certain the Gpu has survived ok, as it was loaded to desktop when I noticed the temps on core temp in the sys tray were higher than normal on the CPU. Spun up the fans in the gigabyte windows software and couldn't hear the Kuhler fans which are normally very loud on full whack. So I pulled the side off the case and couldn't see the rad fans spinning and noticed a drip off the bottom of the rad while checking the fan connectors. Immediately pulled the power, pulled the 290 out and noticed some liquid on the back of the pcb, cleaned it off and put the card in the airing cupboard.

Motherboard doesn't seem to have faired as well though, the CPU fan header now does not work anymore tried a separate Pam fan on it and nothing happening, kinda ****ed off at this as I just RMA the previous board as it was dead out of the box. This one was working sweet as a nut out of the box, until tonight

Oh we'll here's hoping the Gpu is fine at least.

 

[jrodga2k5]

I hate to say it but despite my earlier comments about noise I'm really being swayed by the cost vs another GTX 780 and the potential of mantle and trueaudio.

Can the reference cards have the voltage tweaked? More importantly has anyone successfully undervolted to reduce noise?

You can certainly tweak the voltage on the reference cards, I think Matt did it to reduce the temps, he also recommended the Gelid Extreme Paste to knock the temps down also.

 

[Sacrifice]

Thinking about going crossfire, would my 2600k at 4.3 as it is now throttle them? Also, psu wise, what would people recommend?

 

[LtMatt]

You can certainly tweak the voltage on the reference cards, I think Matt did it to reduce the temps, he also recommended the Gelid Extreme Paste to knock the temps down also.

Indeed. Gelid paste is up there with the very best. Perhaps only that liquid metal stuff is better, but the Gelid paste is much easier to use. You should be able to undervolt by around -0.050mv at stock. I could go further but at desktop idle i get flickering if i undervolt any further. Its a shame because the cards are stable in game with lower volts. I believe this is the problem with offset voltage and variable 2d clocks. The idle voltage gets lowered as well with offset so after a while you reach a point where the core clock fluctuates (slightly) at idle and the voltage fluctuates and it goes too low to keep a solid non flickering picture.

Thinking about going crossfire, would my 2600k at 4.3 as it is now throttle them? Also, psu wise, what would people recommend?

i7 would be fine. In some games you might need to overclock it a bit to say 4.6ghz+ but for most it will be fine. Any decent modern game will use 8 threads well (like bf4) and iin that case i run it at 4ghz as thats generally enough. Mantle will help your cpu greatly in games that support it.

 

[jrodga2k5]

i7 would be fine. In some games you might need to overclock it a bit to say 4.6ghz+ but for most it will be fine. Any decent modern game will use 8 threads well (like bf4) and iin that case i run it at 4ghz as thats generally enough. Mantle will help your cpu greatly in games that support it.

Agreed mate, I was running an HD7990...like yourself at one point...and my i7 3770k was clocked @ 4.3Ghz most of the time and you get buckets of performance. Don't need to worry about any slowdown that's for sure.

Anyways I've now settled in with my R9 290 and I have to say I do love the card...now I've got my Hybrid on it Battlefield is like a dream on the system and if I'm honest I'm not missing the HD7990 at all.

I do believe I'll eventually jump on the Crossfire bandwagon next year at some point again when it no doubt becomes cheap to source a second...and hopefully some better air cooling solutions which require less space.

 

[Sacrifice]

Good to know, as I just bought another one, now to sort a psu out, matt i could have sworn i saw you state you have a ~850W and you said it was insufficient, any tips?

 

[Confused Stu]

Good to know, as I just bought another one, now to sort a psu out, matt i could have sworn i saw you state you have a ~850W and you said it was insufficient, any tips?

Pretty sure Matt's got a (silver, maybe gold, rated) XFX 750W PSU, and he's found this is limiting his overclock on his graphic cards as during very heavy scenes the PSU can cut out. I was running a bronze rated XFX 750W when I first got my 2 x 290's, and it could cope but the air pumping out the PSU during heavy gaming was pretty warm, and my plug-in wattage meter was showing 700W-750W being pulled from the wall with the GPUs at stock. Remember, PSUs are rated for what they can provide to the PC, not what they have to pull from the wall to do it, so my PSU was probably only running at 600W-650W.

Back when I was running 2 7970's, I tried overvolting them to run the Sleeping Dogs bench, and my PC froze after pulling over 900W from the wall!

As the 290's take more juice than the 7970's, and I just didn't like the idea of stressing the one component that can take out EVERY other one if it catastrophically fails, so when OcUK reduced a quality 1200W PSU that will fit into my case before Christmas, I jumped at it. Now even when I'm running the PC very hard, the air coming off the PSU is cool and barely a breeze.

Provided it's a good quality 850W, you should be fine running 2 290's off it, but you might find yourself unable to heavily overclock/overvolt. A 750W will run 2 290's, but it's just too close for my liking for long term use.

 

[melmac]

Are there any more custom coolers available that you can install yourself for the 290?

I know the prolimatech, the gelid icy and the artic accelero cooler all work but I understood it that none of them cool VRM's correctly, or maybe I am wrong on this?

What I was hoping for was that with the arrival of the custom cooled cards that more heatsinks would come available better designed for the 290.

Saying all that, I don't have any problems with the noise level or temps of the 290 so far, the only outstanding issue that I have is the couple of Blue screens that I have got while watching youtube videos. Now I haven't got any since I disabled hardware acceleration in the browser. I hope that will be solved with the upcoming 13.35 driver or maybe the 14.1 one.

 

[Lance9394]

My sapphire R9 290 Tri-x arrived today, but I can't attach any photos, haha please add me to the list please

 

[tommybhoy]

Are there any more custom coolers available that you can install yourself for the 290?

I know the prolimatech, the gelid icy and the artic accelero cooler all work but I understood it that none of them cool VRM's correctly, or maybe I am wrong on this?

What I was hoping for was that with the arrival of the custom cooled cards that more heatsinks would come available better designed for the 290.

Saying all that, I don't have any problems with the noise level or temps of the 290 so far, the only outstanding issue that I have is the couple of Blue screens that I have got while watching youtube videos. Now I haven't got any since I disabled hardware acceleration in the browser. I hope that will be solved with the upcoming 13.35 driver or maybe the 14.1 one.

Can't speak for the rest, with the AC Xtreme, if you don't add voltage/+/or oc much, the AC should be ok.

The Xtreme will be quieter/cooler than any AIB custom cooled R9's imo.

Iv'e used 5870/6950/7970/50's under AC Xtremes with supplied heatsinks on the vrms and they all managed vrm temps ok with voltage+high oc's except for the 7970, it needed the big Alpenfon VRM sink as temps got too high-but that requires you to mod the Xtreme(cut part of the heat fins off).

I never tested stock sinks on the 290X vrms, I just went straight for the kill with the BEAST.

Now running my original AC 5870 Xtreme on top of my 290X with Alpenfon VRM sink with BF4 sitting@~57c max@1100/1350 with AB custom fan profile/3 X system fans set on low.

The interesting part but more impressive(due to the high core temps in regards to stock blower) is, the 290X core is running cooler than the 7970/50's ever managed.

£38+£11 bracket direct from AC.

£49 has now custom cooled 5870/6950/7970/7950's/290X!

Still going strong and silent, that cooler is Legendary.

 

[LtMatt]

Pretty sure Matt's got a (silver, maybe gold, rated) XFX 750W PSU, and he's found this is limiting his overclock on his graphic cards as during very heavy scenes the PSU can cut out. I was running a bronze rated XFX 750W when I first got my 2 x 290's, and it could cope but the air pumping out the PSU during heavy gaming was pretty warm, and my plug-in wattage meter was showing 700W-750W being pulled from the wall with the GPUs at stock. Remember, PSUs are rated for what they can provide to the PC, not what they have to pull from the wall to do it, so my PSU was probably only running at 600W-650W.

Back when I was running 2 7970's, I tried overvolting them to run the Sleeping Dogs bench, and my PC froze after pulling over 900W from the wall!

As the 290's take more juice than the 7970's, and I just didn't like the idea of stressing the one component that can take out EVERY other one if it catastrophically fails, so when OcUK reduced a quality 1200W PSU that will fit into my case before Christmas, I jumped at it. Now even when I'm running the PC very hard, the air coming off the PSU is cool and barely a breeze.

Provided it's a good quality 850W, you should be fine running 2 290's off it, but you might find yourself unable to heavily overclock/overvolt. A 750W will run 2 290's, but it's just too close for my liking for long term use.

Spot on. XFX 750 Gold psu. Will upgrade it at some point for a 1000W PSU. Its fine for stock and a small overclock though.

 

[Kaapstad]

XSPC Razor R9 290/290X waterblock review.


http://www.pureoverclock.com/Review-detail/xspc-razor-r9-290290x/

 

[Kaapstad]

Sapphire R9 290 4GB TRI-X OC Review

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/65172-sapphire-r9-290-4gb-tri-x-oc-review.html

 

[LtMatt]

Sapphire R9 290 4GB TRI-X OC Review

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/65172-sapphire-r9-290-4gb-tri-x-oc-review.html

1251 mhz reached on the core clock with only +85mv. Sapphire Tri X 290, AMD reference pcb, great overclockers.

 

[Kaapstad]

1251 mhz reached on the core clock with only +85mv. Sapphire Tri X 290, AMD reference pcb, great overclockers.

Are you tempted.

 

[LtMatt]

Are you tempted.

They're nice cards. Maybe one day.