Fixing The Radeon R9 290 With Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III

Features
By
published

One of the best things we did for our Radeon R9 290 review was pop off AMD's reference cooler and attach Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III. Today, we show you how we did this, we dive deeper into the results, and ultimately recommend the aftermarket heat sink.

Radeon R9 290: Aftermarket Cooling To The Rescue

One of the biggest hits from AMD Radeon R9 290 Review: Fast And $400, But Is It Consistent? was our look at Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III. We knew that getting the Hawaii GPU running cooler and quieter would be the key to making it sing, and so there was one page of coverage dedicated to cooling done right.

Well, we're still waiting for partner cards to show up with third-party thermal solutions. So we thought we'd put together a more comprehensive walk-through of getting the Accelero Xtreme III working and measuring what it can do.

Obviously, if you spend $400 on a new Radeon R9 290 and immediately take it apart, your warranty is void. Also, remember that applying heat sinks using thermal adhesive creates a fairly permanent bond. There is no changing your mind once you go down this path. Then again, who wants to live with the reference cooler anyway? Just don't be that guy who rips a memory package off his PCB after gluing a heat sink to it.

Igor Wallossek
68 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rolli59
    I will wait and get the Gigabyte Windforce then I will not have to pay full price for the cooler. (just saying)
    Reply
  • MauveCloud
    I can't find anything to confirm that you tested this inside a case, and I'm curious what it does to case and cpu temps compared to the reference card, and what it does to a second gpu running in crossfire mode.
    Reply
  • CaptainTom
    I gotta say I agree with AMD's opinion that reference coolers are just there to get the job done as cheaply and consistently as possible since non-references will rule the market anyways.

    But at the end of the day reviewers are gonna continue to mark down cards for these silly things for whatever reason. AMD might as well just make the reference coolers at least as good as SAPPHIRE's Dual-X so that everyone shuts up...
    Reply
  • sha7bot
    I want AMD and NVIDIA to start selling their boards without a cooler. I can buy a waterblock from any number of retailers, but I can't get the damned GPU. Discount the boards and sell them OEM to us consumers.

    Also, try and make your layout a standard so I don't have to keep buying after-market coolers or blocks. I can just move them from board to board.
    Reply
  • FormatC
    @MauveCloud
    I've proofed this construction in my Corsair Obsidian 900D and it works as described, I had to turn on my case fans but only @800-900 rpm. To test a crossfire setup I would have to destroy two cards - sorry, but this was too expensive for me. One modified card is ok, but I cant kill all my samples :D
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    that 1150 clock speed is actually on the low side. on several other forums i frequent people are hitting mid 1300's pretty consistently with aftermarket air coolers, and 1400s on water.

    it seems the r9-290x is pretty much identical clock for clock to the 780ti... so putting a non-reference cooler onto it is almost mandatory; because when it's not temp throttling it's pacing nvidia's $700 monster.
    Reply
  • brainrazer
    I was going to say same thing as sha7bot. Overall though I hope one day we can buy a gpu and fan/cooler in drop it in the Mobo socket like a cpu. Hell even have multiple sockets in a row to take up less space at the end of the mobo to give room for pci slot devices. It always sucks having to decide between these graphics cards or "this" card and a sound card or ssd.
    Reply
  • horaciopz
    Maybe, later on the road Accelero will launch a R9 290 version of this cooler as they did with the HD 7900 version.

    Also, look that, that cooler is barely spinning. You can squish more of it, that would be even more noticable in performance gains!
    Reply
  • s3anister
    "Obviously, if you spend $400 on a new Radeon R9 290 and immediately take it apart, your warranty is void."

    Are all the Vendor's cards like this? If I remember correctly Sapphire used to allow (or still does) people to take the stock cooler off to attach a waterblock without it voiding the warranty.
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    Blimey, that is so much fuss to put together, not to mention the fact that it voids your warranty.. AMD have really, really shot themselves in the foot by not offering after-market cooling at launch.
    Reply