What to look for in a used 290x, and aftermarket cooling options?

[Durvelle27]

Anybody running 4K with crossfire/Trifire

 

[Lopez0101]

This made me go look at Ebay. Now I'm considering getting another 290...

But I'd have to get a bigger case and consider going custom water, even though I'm still waiting for a G10/AIO for my current 290....

Damn having a disposable income!

 

[Sasqui]

This made me go look at Ebay. Now I'm considering getting another 290...

But I'd have to get a bigger case and consider going custom water, even though I'm still waiting for a G10/AIO for my current 290....

Damn having a disposable income!

You need to update your system specs? I bid on a few auctions but lost... tried sniping from my phone while at the Gym and the confirm button jumped off the screen, auction over! The BIN auction I did yesterday was a price I hadn't seen before. Have a tracking number and it's set to arrive on Thurs (praying it's all good!)

 

[Lopez0101]

You need to update your system specs?

Hahahaha. My current specs are in my sig. I hadn't posted on this site since like 2009 before a couple months ago. So my "system specs" is my old rig sitting back home.

I'd have to get another PSU too. Even a 660 plat isn't going to be happy with 2x290's.

 

[GhostRyder]

Interesting about Dogecoin, what about Litecoin? That was what everyone was mentioning relative to the 290x. The ROI was never that great to begin with, and I suspect there was a diminishing supply to be found. I'm a noob when it comes to mining if you couldn't tell. And yea, thanks to the crash, I'll have my first top-of the line single GPU I've ever owned, assuming the one I get is A-ok.

Don't you mean displayport version 1.3?

Well Litecoin became pretty pointless to mine around January from what I heard and Dogecoin had essentially replaced it on the market because you got alot for small machines. The Litecoin had diminishing returns in general and was very difficult to mine because so many people mined them that the energy cost to the coin output was below a point where it made money.

I actually do mean Displayport 1.2a which is the new Vesa Standard. Mostly for future proofing though Displayport 1.2 itself is a standard of this right now as 1.3 wont be out for along time but this quick revision adds that new feature.

 

[Sasqui]

Picked up my Sapphire R9 290X BF4 card today from the post office. It looks perfect, light dust on the fan, everything checks out. The only thing I noticed was the serial number on the retail box is not the same as the card... the seller on eBay had 6 for sale, so I'm assuming they got mixed up. The thing is frikkin' HEAVY!

So, next up is installation.

I'm going to run some tests on my 7870 first, GPUz looks like this:

 

[Sasqui]

So far, flawless!

Benchmark with 7870:

Benchmark with 290x

Same CPU an memory speeds

 

[Sasqui]

Running Furmark at 800x600:

Why the 727 Mhz core?

 

[Lopez0101]

Is it 727Mhz at all times? Otherwise, it's just throttling because it's hitting 94C.

 

[Sasqui]

Is it 727Mhz at all times? Otherwise, it's just throttling because it's hitting 94C.

Definitely, after messing around with CCC, I bumped the temperature threshold down to 80c and max fan speed up to 100%

GAWD is the thing loud. The clock speeds are always slightly lower than what's set in CCC, (set to 1045, running at 990 or so)is that normal?

Oh and here's GPUz... got Hynix memory, (yea!)

 

[GhostRyder]

Thats likely a bug of some sort because ive seen the same thing happen before to me when burning in my 290X cards even though the burn in program reported 1030mhz. MSI Afterburner always reported things correctly for me when running those tests, but one thing is if you set the threshold down on the AMD cards now, if it can't keep the temp below the threshold you set it to it will throttle the clocks. I have my threshold left at 95 since im liquid cooled with manual fan controller setting, however if you set it to 80C and your overclock causes the temp to be 80 degrees where 100% is right on the verge of being enough it will throttle (It seems your card keeps hitting 80 so its probably pulling it back). I would set the threshold back to 90 and just use the fan profile like you have it now to ramp up because it will keep your clocks high and temps in a reasonable range.

BTW forgot, reference cooler right? Thats why your asking about aftermarket cooling solutions? My advice is to grab an accerlero Twin Turbo cooler. Works pretty darn well at helping those temps stay down.

 

[Sasqui]

Thats likely a bug of some sort because ive seen the same thing happen before to me when burning in my 290X cards even though the burn in program reported 1030mhz. MSI Afterburner always reported things correctly for me when running those tests, but one thing is if you set the threshold down on the AMD cards now, if it can't keep the temp below the threshold you set it to it will throttle the clocks. I have my threshold left at 95 since im liquid cooled with manual fan controller setting, however if you set it to 80C and your overclock causes the temp to be 80 degrees where 100% is right on the verge of being enough it will throttle (It seems your card keeps hitting 80 so its probably pulling it back). I would set the threshold back to 90 and just use the fan profile like you have it now to ramp up because it will keep your clocks high and temps in a reasonable range.

BTW forgot, reference cooler right? Thats why your asking about aftermarket cooling solutions? My advice is to grab an accerlero Twin Turbo cooler. Works pretty darn well at helping those temps stay down.

I definitely have to play with the profiles some more. Just got out of playing FC3 (graphics quality & FR is noticeably better!), it pretty quickly got up to the 80c threshold and I had to hear that damn fan!

I do have a reference card and cooler. Solaris here had re-done the TIM on the same card and got a 10c or so drop in temps, so I'll definitely be doing that.

 

[Lopez0101]

Repasting the stock cooler will help a lot, but still, definitely consider getting a 3rd party cooler if you want a quieter system. Also, you could consider a Kraken G10 and an AIO cooler if you want to go that route. I'm still waiting for my G10 bracket to get it, but that's what I'm doing to my 290.

 

[GhostRyder]

I definitely have to play with the profiles some more. Just got out of playing FC3 (graphics quality & FR is noticeably better!), it pretty quickly got up to the 80c threshold and I had to hear that damn fan!

I do have a reference card and cooler. Solaris here had re-done the TIM on the same card and got a 10c or so drop in temps, so I'll definitely be doing that.

If you do not overclock it and leave it at stock threshold, I manually put my fan speed up to 60-65% on the stock cooler (Mine are PowerColor OC refernce models) and the temps never exceeded 85 degrees in 2 way CFX (Those were just burn in's though). At 70% on stock settings the temps never exceed for me 74 degrees but it was quite noticeable. Try putting some better thermal paste on, it may not be a good application on the card or from extended use some loss of performance on the paste. It happens, might help out a little bit if nothing else (I used my Arctic MX-2, works great on cards I replace the paste with).

Oh also forgot to mention this for a try going on ebay and looking for an HD 7950/7950/280/280x/290/290x aftermarket cooler like from asus or the likes. Alot of people who upgrade to liquid or something sell those coolers on ebay for less than 50 bucks and any that I mentioned will fit on those sizes (As long as they are for a reference PCB).

 

[Sasqui]

Repasting the stock cooler will help a lot, but still, definitely consider getting a 3rd party cooler if you want a quieter system. Also, you could consider a Kraken G10 and an AIO cooler if you want to go that route. I'm still waiting for my G10 bracket to get it, but that's what I'm doing to my 290.

I'm going to try improving what I got with new TIM if that doesn't calm this beast down, I'll be looking for aftermarket. Also considering H2O as I do have a decent loop. May need to drop my 3570k back to 4.6 or 4.5 tho.

 

[Lopez0101]

I doubt you'd notice the decrease in CPU clocks in anything other than benchmarks. Properly keeping your GPU cool is more important.

 

[GhostRyder]

I'm going to try improving what I got with new TIM if that doesn't calm this beast down, I'll be looking for aftermarket. Also considering H2O as I do have a decent loop. May need to drop my 3570k back to 4.6 or 4.5 tho.

For reference I have my fx 9590 overclocked to.5.0 on all 8 cores (no turbo) and three r9 290x cards overclocked with a 3x120mm radiator and a 140mm radiator cooling it which keeps all temps at 100% stress below 62c. You should not have to back off overclocks if you add it to the loop in my opinion.