Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

PowerColor LCS AXR9 290X: Water Makes Hawaii Comfortable

PowerColor LCS AXR9 290X: Water Makes Hawaii Comfortable
By

AMD’s Radeon R9 290X is an incredibly powerful gaming card. Unfortunately, the company's cheap cooling solution results in inconsistent performance and excessive noise. PowerColor’s liquid-cooled LCS AXR9 290X is set to solve both issues with finesse.

Our series of Hawaii-based (Radeon R9 290 and 290X) coverage caused more than just a bit of controversy, beginning with Chris’ observations concerning noise and followed by revelations that the AMD-supplied Radeon R9 290 he received for review generated benchmark scores that couldn’t be replicated by retail parts. We eventually found that variations in fan speed at the same PWM setting were part of the problem, but that the inconsistent application of thermal paste was also an issue. Taking apart your heat sink is a good way to get your warranty voided though, and AMD eventually addressed our most pressing concerns by overriding BIOS-determined fan profiles with a new driver. Even more noise was generated by the company's reference design, and simply had to be tolerated. It could only be solved by replacing the stock cooler.

Several of AMD’s partners now offer multi-fan-cooled cards that quietly dump all of the big GPU's heat into your case without the warranty worries of a do-it-yourself upgrade. Frankly, that still sounds like a bad idea to me, since extra heat affects every other component inside your case.

PowerColor has a better solution though, and it's currently selling for $800 online.

Liquid cooling helps enthusiasts move heat away from performance-oriented components to a large radiator, with full control over airflow and noise. Typically, when you build a liquid-cooled system, it's heavier, more intricate, and, of course, at risk of a leak shorting out expensive hardware. All of that is to say, simply, open-loop coolers aren’t for everyone. But if you're confident enough in your assembly technique, PowerColor will back you up with a two-year warranty.

In addition to the custom-cooled card, anyone buying a PowerColor LCS AXR9 290X 4GBD5-WMDHG/OC gets a bundle containing two 3/8” and two 1/2" line fittings, matching hose clamps, replacement seals, a mini 6 mm Allen wrench, a six-to-eight-pin PCIe power adapter, and a Battlefield 4 redemption code.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display 2 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • 0 Hide
    lorribot , 5 March 2014 23:45
    As the water block can be had for around €95 ro c$100 id on't see how Powercolor can justify a $100 mark up. Whilst most would say the cost of the AMD reference design is worth about $10 it robably costs a bit more than that so mark up in the $50-60 region would be better reflection of teh true cost.
  • 0 Hide
    Azazel Zel , 22 March 2014 13:13
    Just buy a Sapphire R9 280X Toxic, save all of this fuss, will eat through any game and costs far less.