Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X in Crossfire in MicroATX?

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Kermie

Limp Gawd
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Jan 13, 2011
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Has anybody done that? I found the card for a good deal of money and I'm wondering if it's possible the two cards will run with consistently decent temperatures. I don't want to jump the gun and find out it runs hot in Crossfire in a MicroATX case.

And in case your asking, I modded my MicroATX case with one fan in the front, one fan in the side and I'm not able to upgrade to ATX at the moment...
 
its going to depend on airflow in the case really. these are "shroud" type cards that dump all that excess heat right into the case, you need to get rid of it in a hurry.

You might want to think about stepping up to the vapor x, as it has more robust cooling.

Its a little more expensive, ($30 each) but it might work better.
 
Also which matx motherboard are you planning on using? At the very least you have to make sure there will be a slot open in between the two cards
 
ASUS Maximus III GENE. I have one PCI-E 16x slot open. Looking to upgrade to a next gen Gigabyte motherboard which'll also have two slots.
 
You'd be lucky not to see a single Tri-X throttle @ stock speed in that case. Putting two of them right next to each other in that case is definitely asking for trouble. Don't even consider it. I expect most people that run 2 290x's in crossfire on air have to go to pretty great lengths to keep heat at bay. They are definitely not doing it in tiny cases with very little air exchange.
 
Bluesun311 said:
You'd be lucky not to see a single Tri-X throttle @ stock speed in that case. Putting two of them right next to each other in that case is definitely asking for trouble. Don't even consider it. I expect most people that run 2 290x's in crossfire on air have to go to pretty great lengths to keep heat at bay. They are definitely not doing it in tiny cases with very little air exchange.
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I understand, that's why I added one side fan and one front fan to the system; it's actually letting air in but I was just wondering what would happen if two of them were paired together. Would it not get air, would it block ventilation? I've seen many do crossfire on ATX systems but rarely do they do them on MicroATX systems and I'm looking at a non-reference cooler for that.
 
They recommend a space between the cards. You might have enough airflow to get away with it if the 2 fans you added move quite a bit of air. If you don't mind a bit of noise you can crank up the fan speeds on the card, as well. It's not ideal though, which I assume you know already or you wouldn't be asking.
 
Update: I just purchased an MSI R9 290X GAMING 4G mainly because I believe the larger fan size and the backplate will help with cooling. I just don't think the Tri-X is up to snuff after much research I did. I don't know if it'll get hot in a MicroATX case but I added two fans to it so it should be enough right?
 
you can't just shove any two fans into an m-atx chassis and think its going to be enough. rule of thumb: more negative pressure than positive. without proper exhaust, hot air just circulates. a generic gateway m-atx computer was never intended to house high end hardware so spending smartly on good fans is imperative.
 
rennyf77 said:
you can't just shove any two fans into an m-atx chassis and think its going to be enough. rule of thumb: more negative pressure than positive. without proper exhaust, hot air just circulates. a generic gateway m-atx computer was never intended to house high end hardware so spending smartly on good fans is imperative.
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To be fair, I knew this when I purchased my first high-end graphics card; that's why I added a front fan and a side fan, to circulate the airflow a little bit more. A cool fact, this case is able to fit an Accelero Xtreme with it's 3 slots so while it may not have been designed to hold high-end hardware; it's certainly capable of carrying it.
 
plenty of oem m-atx systems come with more than 1 expansion slot. a lot of times those expansion slots were intended for things like lan cards or modems. the design of these factory small foot print systems haven't changed in over a decade, so that it fits a triple slot cooler doesn't mean anything. i've taken apart rooms full of compaq 5100s to know. so long as you use a high cfm side fan for exhaust, it will hopefully mitigate the substantial heat coming off that top-down cooled 290x. enjoy the new card. a 290x is powerful enough to handle 4k on its own at medium. you should be set for a while.
 
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