Conclusion

Running the card at stock clocks shows, that when we equipped it with the EK-FC R9-290X Matrix watercooler scores were on average 1.4 percent higher than with the aircooler. This is actually already a solid hint, that the card started to throttle with the powerful Matrix Platinum aircooler, even at stock clocks. The game with the lowest performance benefit is in our case Thief, where we see a difference in frame rates of 0.13 percent. On the other hand there is Crysis 3 where we see that the watercooled card is 2.8 percent quicker. When it comes to stock clocks we also had a look at two theoretical benchmarks, which are 3DMark and Unigine Heaven 4.0. In 3DMark the differences between watercooled and aircooled are tiny, but still measurable with 1.9 percent performance plus for 3DMark FireStrike Extreme and 0.8 percent plus in Unigine Heaven..

Once we started overclocking the cards, we noticed that 1120 MHz on the GPU and 1500 MHz on the memory were maximum stable clocks to run the card aircooled with the Matrix Platinum aircooler. In order to show there is still potential slumbering in the R9 290X, when appropriately cooled, we overclocked the card a little bit higher. In this case we ran it at 1'170 MHz GPU clocks and 1500 MHz memory clocks. 

Let's discuss the results now. In 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme we see the scores increase by 6.4 percent in case of aircooling OC and 8.5 percent when it comes to watercooling OC. In other words this means, with the waterblock you're able to squeeze an additional 2.1 percent out of the card. There was one particular game that's especially interesting, which is Battlefield 4. In this game the watercooled and overclocked card gains no less than 24.4 percent, whereas the aircooled and overclocked card "only" gains 11.3 percent.

On another note we had a closer look at temperatures. There is actually nothing much to say then the obvious. Even under full load and overclocked the watercooled card didn't get hotter than 53°C, whereas the aircooled version ran at 94°C.

Last but not least we want to add a few thoughts. Putting the results into persepective shows, that the R9 290X with an aircooler is running really hot. It's basically hitting the temperature limit as soon as there is heavy load and even the powerful Matrix Platinum cooler from ASUS is not powerful enough to eliminate throttling completely. On the other hand, if you put a watercooler on top of this card, then you can basically unleash the full potential of it. This becomes especially clear as soon as you start overclocking the card. Overall we can say if you go get yourself a high-end R9 290X and you want to get the maximum out of this card, then we'd recommend you to buy a custom watercooling loop and and in combination with the EK-FC R9-290X Matrix you'll get quite a punchy duo. Obviously if you do not own any watercooling gear at all, this is going to cost you something, since you'd have to buy a new radiator and pump at least, as well as some tubing and fittings. The EK-FC R9-290X Matrix we've used for testing in this article is going to set you back 114.95 Euro (price 08.08.2014). As we already pointed out, the hardware is not cheap, but then on the other hand no enthusiast grade hardware is cheap. Should you be one of the guys looking to squeeze the maximum out of your hardware then watercooling your 290X with a full-cover block will put a smile on your face.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 9 - Watch Dogs
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 10 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 11 - Gird Autosport
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 12 - Metro: Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 4	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - Tomb Raider	Page 14 - Temperatures
Page 7 - Thief	Page 15 - Index
Page 8 - Crysis 3	Page 16 - Conclusion