Raijintek Morpheus vs. DirectCU II - ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II
The R9 290X GPU is known to become rather hot and cooling this chip with a reference and even a custom aircooler can be quite a challenge. In almost any case you will see thermal throttling. In this article we're going to compare the results of an ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II Cooled by Raijintek Morpheus versus the same card with its stock ASUS DirectCU II cooler. At this point a little teaser: the differences can be as high as 19 percent!
As we already mentioned, in this article we're going to have a closer look at the differences between
the factory cooled ASUS R9 290X
DirectCU II and the same card equipped with Raijinteks new Morpheus VGA
cooler. First of all we're going to have a
closer look at both, the Raijintek Morpheus as well as the ASUS Direct CU II cooler
to understand the differences. Afterwards we will run the cards through our set of recent games with stock
clocks as well as overclocked. Apparently we
will also show you some temperatures.
ASUS R9 290X Direct CU II -
Raijintek Morpheus
With the Morpheus Raijintek has
introduced an aftermarket VGA cooler, that is compatible with most cards from
AMD as well as NVIDIA. This particular cooler features a whopping 12 heatpipes
and each and every one of them has six milimiter diameter. Other than that
overall manufacturing quality is on a high level and there is for instance a
nickel plated copper base plate with mirror finish. In fact, the entire cooler
has been nickel plated, which definitely adds to the looks and also to the
surface quality. As you can see from the pictures we find a rich bundle to mount
the Morpheus on different graphic cards. Included in the delivery are thermal
pads and three differently sized aluminum heatsinks for memory and VRM area,
which are compatible with HD 7970 and R9 290/290X reference cards. Raijinteks
Morpheus VGA cooler is actually compatible with AMD: R9 290/290X reference, R9
280X reference, R9 270/270X reference as well as ASUS DirectCU II card. In terms
of compatibility we find the following GPUs on the list: GTX 650, 650 Ti, 660,
660 Ti,760, 770, 780 and 780 Ti. What’s not included in the bundle are the fans,
whereas the cooler itself weighs 515g and measures 254 x 98 x 44 millimeter.
Other than that block features two years warranty and mounting the Morpheus is
rather easy thanks to the decent manual.
ASUS R9 290X Direct CU II - Aircooling
DirectCU II
This version of the DirectCU II cooler comes with no less than five
heatpipes, which feature a GSG shape. There is one heatpipe with a massive
diameter of ten millimeter and other than there are two more with eight
millimeter diameter and another two which measure six millimeters. The heatpipes have been nickel plated and are in direct contact with the GPU core. Soldered to the heatpipes you find the fin stack which is being provided with fresh air via two 95mm fans. The fan closer to the I/O shield is a hybrid axial/radial fan ASUS like to call "CoolTech". They claim that this fan is able to provide a higher airflow than standard axial or radial fans at the same noise level. In case of the second fan you find a standard axial fan. Both fans are being manufactured by Everflow and strangely share the same model name, T129215SU.
Overall the cooler is well made and the finish is on a very reasonable level too.
This cooler definitely plays in another league than the reference cooler from
AMD. But still, even this custom aircooler is just about able to not make the
290X throttle at stock clocks.
[pagebreak]
Test Setup
Hardware
|
Mainboard |
- ASUS Maximus V Formula (BIOS 1707)
|
| CPUs |
- Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.0 GHz (Turbo On / HT On)
|
|
Memory |
- G.Skill Ares Dual Channel 2x8GB @ CL11-13-13-31-1T-Auto DDR3-2400 MHz
|
|
Graphic Cards (Driver) |
-
290X DirectCU II Stock Cooling - Aircooled
-
290X DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus 2 X Noiseblocker eLoop B12-PS
120mm 7V
|
| Drivers |
|
| Games and OS |
- Windows 7 x64 (Up to date
on the 25/07/2013
- All
games were up to date on the 25/07/2013
|
|
HDD |
- OCZ Technology Octane 512 GB SSD
|
PSU
|
- Seasonic Patinum SS-1000XP / 1000 Watts
|
[pagebreak]
3DMark - Fire Strike
| Stock Clocks |
Points |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
9'714 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
9'760 |
100.47 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
Points |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
10'301 |
106.04 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
10'658 |
109.72 % |
| |
More is better |
3DMark - Fire Strike Extreme
| Stock Clocks |
Points |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
5'010 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
5'022 |
100.24 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
Points |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
5'331 |
106.41 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
5'580 |
111.38 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Unigine Heaven 4.0 Extreme Preset
| Stock Clocks |
Points |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
1'803 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
1'890 |
104.83 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
Points |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
1'783 |
98.89 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
1'950 |
111.37 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
BattleField 4
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
68.51 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
69.20 |
101.01 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
75.89 |
110.77 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
81.45 |
118.89 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
BattleField 3
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
106.0 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
106.2 |
100.19 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
114.5 |
108.02 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
115.8 |
109.24 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Bioshock Infinite - Benchmark
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
97.06 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
102.10 |
105.19 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
111.30 |
114.67 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
111.10 |
116.33 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Crysis 3
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
28.80 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
29.10 |
101.04 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
30.71 |
106.63 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
31.42 |
109.10 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Call of Duty Black Ops 2
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
145.80 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
146.70 |
100.62 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
158.45 |
108.68 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
159.62 |
109.47 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Sleeping Dogs - Benchmark
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
73.0 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
73.4 |
100.55 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
78.6 |
107.67 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
80.7 |
110.55 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
123.40 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
123.50 |
100.08 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
125.86 |
101.99 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
133.27 |
107.91 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Metro: Last Light - Benchmark
| Stock Clocks |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
47.61 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
47.90 |
100.61 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking |
fps |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
52.73 |
110.75 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
53.00 |
111.32 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Power
Consumption
| Stock Clocks - Idle |
Watt |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
57 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
61 |
107.02 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking - Idle |
Watt |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
79 |
138.60 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
80 |
140.35 % |
| |
More is better |
| Stock Clocks - Load |
Watt |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
420 |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
423 |
100.71 % |
| |
More is better |
| Overclocking - Load |
Watt |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
476 |
113.33 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
480 |
114.26 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Temperatures
Idle
| Stock Clocks |
Idle |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
34 °C |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
30 °C |
| |
| Overclocking |
Idle |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
40 °C |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
35 °C |
| |
More is better |
Load
| Stock Clocks |
Load |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
81 °C |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
75 °C |
| |
| Overclocking |
Load |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
81 °C |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
74 °C |
| |
More is better |
Battlefield 3
| Stock Clocks |
Load |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
55 °C |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
47 °C |
| |
| Overclocking |
Load |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
60 °C |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
52 °C |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Index
| Stock Clocks |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
100.00 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1050 / Mem 1350MHz) |
101.34 % |
| |
| Overclocking |
Index |
| 290X
DirectCU II Stock Cooling (GPU 1150 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
108.65 % |
| 290X
DirectCU II Raijintek Morpheus (GPU 1200 / Mem 1500 MHz) |
111.39 % |
| |
More is better |
[pagebreak]
Conclusion
There
is acutally one crucial reason why we chose the R9 290X for this test. This chip
is known to become quite hot and to then start throttling. Equipped with the
reference cooler the situation is even worse than with this version of the
DirectCU II cooler, which is actually a powerful aircooler for graphics cards.
Nevertheless, when we started to overclock the card we reached the the
aircoolers limit - apparently. At this point we're going to walk you through the results
gathered on previous pages and then add a few of our thoughts.
Running the card at stock clocks shows, that when we equipped it with the
Raijintek Morpheus scores were on average 1.3 percent higher than with the
aircooler. This is actually already a solid hint, that the card started to
throttle with the powerful DirectCU II aircooler, even at stock clocks. In the
case of Bioshock: Infinite we see that the Morpheus-cooled card is pulling away
by no
less than 5.2 percent. 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 Raijintek-cooled and DirectCU-II-cooled are tiny, but in
Unigine Heaven 4.0 there is a 4.8 percent gap.
Once we started overclocking the cards, we noticed that 1150 MHz on the GPU and
1500 MHz on the memory were maximum stable clocks to run the card cooled with
the DirectCU II aircooler. In order to show there is quite some additional potential still
slumbering in the R9 290X cooler (when it receives evern more cooling) we overclocked the
card a little bit higher. In this case we ran it at 1200 MHz GPU clocks and 1500
MHz memory clocks.
Let's discuss the overclocking results now. In 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme we see the scores
increase by 6.4 percent in case of OC with the DirectCU II cooler and 11.4 percent when it comes
to the Morpheus-cooled card. This means there is a 5.0 percent gap inbetween
DirectCU-II-cooling and Morpheus-cooling, although the difference in overclocking is only 4.34 percent.
When we run Unigine Heaven 4.0 we even notice
that the result, in the case of the DirectCU-II-cooled OC tests, dropped below the non-OC
value. This apparently shows there was some rather heavy throttling going on and
the chip is constantly hitting the temperature target. The same card, equipped
with Raijinteks Morpheus did not throttle at all and the performance goes up by
11.4 percent. Overall the DirectCU-II-cooled version is able to gain 8.7 percent
performance with the overclocking and the Morpheus-cooled variant is 11.4 percent
quicker.
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
Raijintek Morpheus-cooled card didn't get hotter than 74°C, whereas the DCU II version ran
at 81°C.
Last but not least we want to add a few thoughts. Obviously, the DirectCU II
cooler is already a well performing piece of hardware. Nevertheless Raijinteks
Morpheus can beat the benchmarks set by ASUS's custom cooler. Considering the
Morpheus equipped with two 120 x 120 x 25 millimeter fans blocks three expansion
slots, and therefore it's substantially bigger than the DirectCU II cooler, we
expected the Morpheus to perform better than the DirectCU II. Apart from that
upgrading an ASUS DirectCU II card with an aftermarket cooler is definitely
questionable, but what really makes sense is putting the Morpheus on a reference
Radeon R9 290X. This will prevent the card from throttling and give you access
to quite a bit more performance. Also overclocking headroom is apparently going
to increase and on a reference R9 290X the 53 Euro, you'd have to pay for the
Raijintek Morpheus, are money well spent.
We gave the
Morpheus from Raijintek
4 out of 5 stars.
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