290x underwater/aftermarket air questions...

S

Syphon Filter

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 19, 2003
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Hi,

I assume some of the [H] crew have modded their 290x cards with either aftermarket air coolers or stuck them underwater.

What sort of gains have you seen in terms of extra performance?

Do the cards clock themselves higher automatically while staying within temp/power limits?

If anyone did a before and after it would be interesting to know how much higher you could clock after the modding.

Any info would be much appreciated.

TIA

Syphon
 
i never cared about increasing the overclock by adding accerlero hybrid water cooling to my 290's it was more about just decreasing the temp, and while fully stressed mining litecoins they went from 94c down to 69c
 
Wildace said:
i never cared about increasing the overclock by adding accerlero hybrid water cooling to my 290's it was more about just decreasing the temp, and while fully stressed mining litecoins they went from 94c down to 69c
Click to expand...

What speeds do you get mining from your cards?
 
Water cooling lowers temps, minimizes throttling, allows higher over clocks improves a good frames per second.
 
SonDa5 said:
Water cooling lowers temps, minimizes throttling, allows higher over clocks improves a good frames per second.
Click to expand...

I realised that :rolleyes:

I was looking for some numbers.

i.e. I at stock I could only clock 50Mhz on core but after modding I can now OC by 200MHz etc.
 
Performance varies from card to card. Most important performance of water cooling is lowering temps A nice side benefit is quieting down your rig. You are setting yourself up for failure if you think water cooling your video card will give you the same overclock performance that other people get.
 
I don't know if you're genuinely trying to help or not but it's coming across as really patronising.

I know that these things are down to the silicon lottery but it's useful to hear anecdotal stories from others regarding their experiences.
 
I stuck the icy 2 on my 290 and idle temp is 30c and max load temp I have seen is 61c after about an hour of crisis 3 as I just used gpu-z to log data.. the chip will perform but the stock cooling is not that great so I would wait for AIB to release there cards.

The icy 2 does great but getting the ram sinks to stay on is the issue as 2 have already fell off .. so I will have to order something else or go water block.
 
Syphon Filter said:
I don't know if you're genuinely trying to help or not but it's coming across as really patronising.

I know that these things are down to the silicon lottery but it's useful to hear anecdotal stories from others regarding their experiences.
Click to expand...

Honestly, these cards don't seem to scale all that well from voltage. Don't expect huge differences in performance from better cooling alone. The difference seems minimal on these cards to be honest.

The main differences are temps and noise. You might get another 100mhz by going with water.

I didn't see the sort of differences in overclocking potential that I saw with 7950.
 
Awesome, that's the kind of info I was after.

That suggests these cards are running right at the limit of what they're physically capable of, i.e. there's not much headroom.

So while the AIB cards will bring sound levels and temps down that's all they will bring. These cards do not appear to be temperature or voltage bound, they're simply at their limit of ability.

Obviously some will achieve greater clocks than others but broadly speaking a few tens of MHz may be all most can hope for.

Hmmmmm.

I'm just trying to put together a build and I can't decide between saving some money and going 290X or spending more and going with 780Ti.

If the 290x was shown to be a supreme clocker then it would have been an easier choice. Having said that, the extra RAM and bus-width may help the 290x cards remain relevant for a little longer if one was going to keep the card for a while (say 2 years minimum).
 
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Mine won't really overclock now that I flashed them to 290x, but before I tore my machine down over the weekend, running crossfire I was getting max vrm temps of about 50 and core temps of around 40-42 at stock clocks. I'm running EK waterblocks and 360mm radiator.

I watercool mostly because it's something else to tweak and I like to keep my rig as quiet as possible.

If you play at 2560x1600 or above, the 290x is the better card (290 is close enough to not even really matter) vs the 780TI. If you are playing at 1080i it's really a matter of which brand you prefer.
 
Just to give you an idea what my 2 watercooled 290's are running at. With EK Nickel+Acetal waterblocks they run at 29-31C at normal operations depending on temps in my room, and 37C Max under heavy bench-marking/playing BF4 and other major titles.

Dont waste your time and money on closed loop water systems that you have to ghetto rigged in order to get your temps down, if you are on a budget get this http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...ev_2_Up_to_R9_290X_Series_GTX_780_Series.html It gives you pretty much the same performance and better than a ghetto rigged closed loop system.
 
Thanks for the info guys, really appreciate it. More input always welcome though!

veedub,

I'll be gaming at 1440p.
 
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