Watercooled 290x

[BallaTheFeared]

You can discuss the performance of cards withoutcheerleading, at least that is what I try to do.

No non reference cards or PCBs is not my problem, nor is it a factor when discussing the current products available.

The biggest issue with this discussion is our inability as users to garner exactly what clock speeds these reviews are taking place at. Which is why I'm relying mostly on hw.fr and user data.

1250MHz for a water cooled R290X specifically from an overclockers perspective, the same perspective I had with my 470s, the same perspective I had with my 7950s is the 780 is the better card and the better value right now.

From my current perspective, R290X is a power hog and not something I would at all be interested in personally unless it can drastically reduce consumption for minor performance losses with aftermarket and undervolted results which we haven't seen yet. Of course that perspective would be pointless to bring into this thread, so of course I left it by the wayside when I entered it.

 

[Tempered81]

1320mhz:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1436635/ocn-gk110-vs-hawaii-bench-off-thread/740#post_21101593

 

[BrightCandle]

Yikes that is a lot of extra voltage to get what amounts to 30% extra. Still 1320Mhz is pretty impressive.

 

[Bateluer]

No, you can't. 290X waterblock is $150. CPU block is another $85. I've broken your budget without a pump, res, tubing, fans or rads.

Every PC I have had in the past 5+ years has been watercooled. It is not a cheap hobby.

Granted, I've been out of the watercooling thing since 2006 or so, but uh, this is less than 120 and its the flagship in Corsair's product line.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181035

Only the CPU there, but you can cut it back to an H60 or H55 model for half that.



This thread caught my eye because I just ordered a 290X, and while I'll most likely keep stock cooling through the winter months, I may start looking at more exotic cooling next May. Before the Phoenix summer kicks in. What are the good places to look for aftermarket video card cooling?

 

[phillyboy]

For me I go in this order:

sidewindercomputers.com (Gary is a great vendor to do business with)
frozencpu.com (FYI - take note of their return policy...)
performance-pcs.com
petrastechshop.com (nothing wrong with them - just out of habit I go to the others first)

They all should have VGA blocks. FrozenCPU will have the largest selection usually.

 

[Will Robinson]

You can discuss the performance of cards withoutcheerleading, at least that is what I try to do.

No non reference cards or PCBs is not my problem, nor is it a factor when discussing the current products available.

The biggest issue with this discussion is our inability as users to garner exactly what clock speeds these reviews are taking place at. Which is why I'm relying mostly on hw.fr and user data.

1250MHz for a water cooled R290X specifically from an overclockers perspective, the same perspective I had with my 470s, the same perspective I had with my 7950s is the 780 is the better card and the better value right now.

From my current perspective, R290X is a power hog and not something I would at all be interested in personally unless it can drastically reduce consumption for minor performance losses with aftermarket and undervolted results which we haven't seen yet. Of course that perspective would be pointless to bring into this thread, so of course I left it by the wayside when I entered it.

LOL OMG I just died laughing and this is my ghost typing.

 

[Will Robinson]

NVM

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Granted, I've been out of the watercooling thing since 2006 or so, but uh, this is less than 120 and its the flagship in Corsair's product line.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181035

Only the CPU there, but you can cut it back to an H60 or H55 model for half that.



This thread caught my eye because I just ordered a 290X, and while I'll most likely keep stock cooling through the winter months, I may start looking at more exotic cooling next May. Before the Phoenix summer kicks in. What are the good places to look for aftermarket video card cooling?

When you get your 290x check out the VRM temps under load. It's probably going to be the determining factor on needing full coverage for water cooling vs. a more simple GPU block only setup.

 

[blackened23]

When you get your 290x check out the VRM temps under load. It's probably going to be the determining factor on needing full coverage for water cooling vs. a more simple GPU block only setup.

Agreed. I'm not a fan of universal GPU blocks for precisely this reason - at high voltages VRM cooling becomes a big issue, and universal blocks don't address this at all - while full coverage blocks do. I'd imagine for the 290X you'd want a full block as opposed to a universal. Heck, I wouldn't raise the voltage on *anything* without a full coverage block - it's pretty risky (on the VRM) without adequate cooling.

I guess, there are some things in life and hobbies that you can go cheap on. I personally don't favor water cooling all that much anymore (don't have enough time to fiddle with custom loops) but If I did, I wouldn't go cheap. You really do get what you pay for with custom loops. If you go cheap, the performance will reflect that.

 

[guskline]

Agreed. I'm not a fan of universal GPU blocks for precisely this reason - at high voltages VRM cooling becomes a big issue, and universal blocks don't address this at all - while full coverage blocks do. I'd imagine for the 290X you'd want a full block as opposed to a universal. Heck, I wouldn't raise the voltage on *anything* without a full coverage block - it's pretty risky (on the VRM) without adequate cooling.

I guess, there are some things in life and hobbies that you can go cheap on. I personally don't favor water cooling all that much anymore (don't have enough time to fiddle with custom loops) but If I did, I wouldn't go cheap. You really do get what you pay for with custom loops. If you go cheap, the performance will reflect that.

Agreed. Though I have different full cover water blocks for my twin EVGA GTX670FTWs the full cover aspect of cooling both the gpu AND memory not only makes sense it protects the memory. In a stock air cooler such as the one used on my cards, it had a full heatsink plate that covered all the memory and the fan and thermal heatsink for the gpu. When the fan ran it was exhausting both the heat for the gpu coming from its heatsink AND the heat coming off the passive heatsink on the memory chips. Using a VGA-only water cooling block was the way to go when memory wasn't being taxed so much. Now, I would NEVER do that. Full water blocks take the heat off both the gpu and the memory.

 

[raghu78]

LOL OMG I just died laughing and this is my ghost typing.

I too fell off my chair laughing what a bunch of crap

 

[Gikaseixas]

From my current perspective, R290X is a power hog and not something I would at all be interested in personally unless it can drastically reduce consumption for minor performance losses with aftermarket and undervolted results which we haven't seen yet.

This, from a person who had GTX 470 SLI. You suddently care for power consumption and temps, WOW.

Anandtech's bench show that GTX 470 also reached 94C while gaming and consumption was higher than Radeon 5870. Why did you pick 470 over 5870 again?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/511?vs=519

 

[BallaTheFeared]

This, from a person who had GTX 470 SLI. You suddently care for power consumption and temps, WOW.

Anandtech's bench show that GTX 470 also reached 94C while gaming and consumption was higher than Radeon 5870. Why did you pick 470 over 5870 again?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/511?vs=519

It sure wasn't a suddenly thing, temps have always been something I kept in check. Power has been a progressive thing, from a 5.5GHz i5-2500k to a 4.8GHz i5-4670k that gives similar performance with less than half the power consumption without need of water or even high rpm fans on an expensive air cooler.

470 SLI was late 2010 mid 2011, single 470 on air for the latter part of 2012, 7950 since the first half of 2013 it's almost 2014 now. Can't a person grow and change their wants/needs? I think the biggest factor in my decline into power concern was the purchase of a kill-a-watt. Once I plugged that in there was no longer any mystery left, and the fact of the matter glowed from a small LCD screen each and every time I did something.

I picked the 470 because it was considerably cheaper than the 5870 at the time, it was $185 vs the $250 cost of the 6870 which it was neck and neck with as far as I can remember. That combined with it's notorious 35-40% OC on air lead me towards it, I was planning to go two cards and water. At that point I was already water cooling my 4.5GHz 1090T. So the progression from single 470 to i5-2500k to second 470 all water cooled represented at the time what I believed to be a fairly good value return. And for me at that stage in my life where I was rigging up everything for max performance it made sense.

But perhaps a huge wall of text isn't what is needed for this.

Take your Anand bench results, add 7% to the 5870 and 50% to the 470, then get back to me on which you think you would get if you were water cooling and didn't care about power.

290X vs 780 is nothing like 470 vs 5870.

I haven't openly criticized people who went the 5870 route because it used less power but now think the R290X is fine. Because I'm aware people can change their wants and needs as time goes on and 2010 was a long time ago.

 

[Bateluer]

When you get your 290x check out the VRM temps under load. It's probably going to be the determining factor on needing full coverage for water cooling vs. a more simple GPU block only setup.

I've had poor luck in the past with ramsinks and VRM sinks not sticking to the components properly. EK does have some full card 290X blocks listed, but on backorder right now.

There's a few Youtube videos of people retrofitting Corsairs Hx0 line into GPU coolers, but they're all GPU block only designs.

 

[rgallant]

LOL OMG I just died laughing and this is my ghost typing.

did you die while gaming using gtx 470 sli if so just pull them out of the case and hold them to your cheeks [not the face] and that should bring you back to life.

 

[chimaxi83]

Jeez, I was going to post some stuff here about my water cooled 290X, especially since that's the thread title... but this thread is now a steaming pile. :thumbsdown:

 

[Zanovar]

Jeez, I was going to post some stuff here about my water cooled 290X, especially since that's the thread title... but this thread is now a steaming pile. :thumbsdown:

 

[Slomo4shO]

Jeez, I was going to post some stuff here about my water cooled 290X, especially since that's the thread title... but this thread is now a steaming pile. :thumbsdown:

Your benchmarks would be welcome at OCN

 

[hawtdawg]

1270 mhz under water? It's going to have to do better than that. There will be AIB 780 Ti's that will hit 1400 on air.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

1270 mhz under water? It's going to have to do better than that. There will be AIB 780 Ti's that will hit 1400 on air.

Exactly why this isn't similar to 40nm. There is no upside for the 290x.

1110 gtx 780 beats 1050mhz 290x @ 1440. 1250 on water is not enough.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Exactly why this isn't similar to 40nm. There is no upside for the 290x.

1110 gtx 780 beats 1050mhz 290x @ 1440. 1250 on water is not enough.

What benchmark? 3d Mark?

I do love playing 3d mark a lot. It's easy on my carpal tunnel because I do nothing it not being a game and all.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

What benchmark? 3d Mark?

I do love playing 3d mark a lot. It's easy on my carpal tunnel because I do nothing it not being a game and all.

No I'm ignoring 3DMark since I stopped playing it myself a long time ago, probably when they released that garbage 2013 version which made me wait through several demos and pointless laptop and smartphone tests on my desktop.

Overall, in actual games.

 

[RayTheKing]

I got a few good laughs from this thread. Tying up a H100 to a 290x using cable ties.. @bam watercooled
I lost it

In all seriousness, the 290x isn't as hot as everyone expected it to be. Let's just hope that the aftermarket versions overclock well.

 

[raghu78]

Exactly why this isn't similar to 40nm. There is no upside for the 290x. 1110 gtx 780 beats 1050mhz 290x @ 1440. 1250 on water is not enough.

rubbish. the GTX 780 requires 200 mhz higher clocks to match a R9 290X in games, leave alone beat it. especially one which is not throttling. 70 - 75% fan speed is a necessity on R9 290X if you want to keep 1100 - 1150 mhz constant. at those speeds you need a GTX 780 at 1300 - 1350 mhz to keep up with the R9 290X.

even better is the min fps on R9 290X at 1440p in BF4. its significantly higher than GTX 780 (25%)

http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/17810-prestandaanalys-battlefield-4/3#pagehead

Nov 5th will bring further confirmation that R9 290 is the GTX 780 competitor. :biggrin:

What benchmark? 3d Mark?

I do love playing 3d mark a lot. It's easy on my carpal tunnel because I do nothing it not being a game and all.

for the time being its Unigine valley and 3DMark 11 because Nvidia does well. the people have even forgotten that 3d mark 2013 has replaced the 3dmark 2011 as the more recent and more advanced test. tough to let go the benchmarks where your favourite company is doing well even if they are older and irrelevant.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

-snip-