PowerColor LCS R9 290X Watercooled Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 28.02.14Page:
The card
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PowerColor decided to equip the Radeon R9 290X LCS with the new waterblock from EK Water Blocks, named the FC R9-290X and Powercolor has been using EK waterblocks since the HD 4870 days. The EK- FC R9-290X is a water block design for reference R9 290X PCBs and as its a full-cover design, it cools the memory, GPU and the VRM part as well. Overall, the cooler is well made and the finish is on a very reasonable level too, as expected from the EK Water Blocks. A good quality thermal paste has been spread all over the GPU, memory and the VRM zone. It is definitely a smart idea to use a water block on the R9 series from AMD because the of temprature limit protection. In this case the GPU downclocks automatically in order to avoid damage to the graphic card which in the end means loosing performance in most if not all games. With this water cooled version we did not notice this problem and the graphics card was at its 100% usage without loosing performance.
Like the reference model, the PowerColor LCS has a DIP switch to select between two BIOS options. Unfortunately, the switch is not labled labelled. The SW1 is the so called "uber mode" which puts the card at 1000MHz for the GPU and 1250MHz (5.0GHz DDR5) for the memory, while SW2 is Overclocked mode which puts it at 1060MHz for the GPU and 1350MHz (5.4GHz DDR5) for the memory. This is unfortunately not mentioned in the bundled documentation or on the website product page. Unlike the reference model, PowerColor chose to equip its card with Overclocked mode BIOS rather than a normal/uber mode BIOS seen on reference R9 290X graphics cards. In our opinion, PowerColor definitely made the right choice since the water cooler can certainly cope with it. We have tested both modes and surprisingly we did not experience any performance loss using the Overclocked BIOS due to low tempratures. The GPU was at around 30 degrees in idle and under load with Furmark, the GPU reached 46 degrees and never passed 42 degrees during any game or other benchmark.
We were quite and pleasantly surprised with the achievement, as this card did our maximum stable
overclocking test with ease. We used Furemark V1.11.0 Geeks3D benchmark with 15 minutes
duration, anmd the PowerColor LCS 290X was stable at 1310MHz on GPU and 1570MHz on
memory with 1.35 GPU voltage and default memory voltage. Thanks to the high
leakage chip and, of course, the EK Water Block high quality water block, which covers the more critical part of
R9 series, the VRM part, the maximum temprature at those voltages and frequency was
a mere 53 degrees.
Powercolor has decided to cool its Radeon R9 290X LCS with a full-cover water cooling block and full cover backplate which prevents bending and protect the card at the same time.
Checking the voltage regulation module temprature, we never passed 59 degress in full load using Furmark and in idle we measured a rather funny 29 degrees. For the first time on recent graphic cards, we found international rectifier IR 35678 for the GPU, and one uP1631P from uPI Semiconductor for the memory.
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The memory chips used are made by Elpida and carry the model number W2032BBBG-6A-F. They are specified to run at 1'350MHz (5'400 MHz effective).
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