ASUS R9 290x OC - Throttling

I'm screwed with this card. I can't even fit an aftermarket water cooler on it. Like this
And I'm convinced now that RMA-ing will only result in a long wait, after which they'll tell me that the card is ok, and I should pay for their trouble.

The back plate of the card gets very hot, which is strange since it doesn't contact any components on the card.
 
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Throttling was a common issue when I had 2 reference x R9 290s in my PC. The cards would reach 94C quickly and down clock to as low as 700Mhz. And I could notice some serious frame drops in the game play.

But my 2 x 290 TriX never had these issues.

I guess with the R9 290 series, you have to make sure you cool them properly. The best route to go is to have non-reference cards.

It's a pity when compared to NVidia, who have top-notch reference coolers. You can easily get a 15% overclock on their reference cards without any throttling but I wasn't able to do so with the reference R9s at all.
 
madgun said:
Throttling was a common issue when I had 2 reference x R9 290s in my PC. The cards would reach 94C quickly and down clock to as low as 700Mhz. And I could notice some serious frame drops in the game play.

But my 2 x 290 TriX never had these issues.

I guess with the R9 290 series, you have to make sure you cool them properly. The best route to go is to have non-reference cards.

It's a pity when compared to NVidia, who have top-notch reference coolers. You can easily get a 15% overclock on their reference cards without any throttling but I wasn't able to do so with the reference R9s at all.
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Throttling happens on Nvidia's side as well, and sometimes randomly. Just replaced my GTX680 today with an old 6970 because the GTX680 randomly kept dropping to 2d clocks with a bunch of screen flicker each time it did it. My titan rig has downclocking issues too, but it's less of a problem as the titan has a lot of power to make up for it.

Even with proper cooling the downclocking problem doesn't go away with nvidia cards. Few posts in here acting like it magically goes away if you go green team. No, go check their forums, same throttling shit, different cards.
 
Zomoa said:
Throttling happens on Nvidia's side as well, and sometimes randomly. Just replaced my GTX680 today with an old 6970 because the GTX680 randomly kept dropping to 2d clocks with a bunch of screen flicker each time it did it. My titan rig has downclocking issues too, but it's less of a problem as the titan has a lot of power to make up for it.

Even with proper cooling the downclocking problem doesn't go away with nvidia cards. Few posts in here acting like it magically goes away if you go green team. No, go check their forums, same throttling shit, different cards.
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I would say that throttling is more pronounced with the reference R9 290s, especially once summer hit and room tempretures rose.

I have been binning different R9s and 780 GTX Ti's and I haven't seen throttling on a single Ti or non-Reference R9s. Only the reference R9 290s seemed to suffer badly.

And yes, I only run under crossfire or SLi which puts more stress on the cards situated at the top.
 
madgun said:
I would say that throttling is more pronounced with the reference R9 290s, especially once summer hit and room tempretures rose.

I have been binning different R9s and 780 GTX Ti's and I haven't seen throttling on a single Ti or non-Reference R9s. Only the reference R9 290s seemed to suffer badly.

And yes, I only run under crossfire or SLi which puts more stress on the cards situated at the top.
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I put my non reference on top and my reference on the bottom. The temps get close to 80F when playing tomb raider.

This is with 290 crossfire.
 
M76 said:
I've just checked, VRM temperutare goes up to 114, and GPU temp goes to 95 while gaming, not in synthetic tests.

Does that confirm that the card is faulty?
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If your getting those temps with the fans on the gpu running at 100% then either you have a faulty card, bad thermal grease and or bad mounting contact, or just horrible air flow in your case. Have you considered taking the side panel of and blowing a fan directly on it while making sure the cards fans are running at full speed...if its still running that hot then look into returning the card or see if they will allow you to remove the cooler and redo the thermal grease.

I know xfx and evga are cool with that but im not sure about asus......if they wont let you inspect/ remove the cooler i would return it...thats just to hot even for a 290......maybe you can get a high end SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X that actually keeps the card cool. I love asus motherboards but there video cards are not the best.
 
The VRM 1 temp still hits over 110C even when the card is running bare with a desktop fan blowing at max at it.
 
Lets not kid ourselves guys, their is no defending the red teams reference, and why people by them for none water cooling setups is above me
 
The stock R9-290 cooler isn't that bad...

My xfx card before I put it under water didn't throttle. Just increased the fan speed manually to like 55%. Wasn't even loud.

Best way to deal with The R9-290 is put it under water. Reduces the power draw and lets you overclock like mad.

I am running at 1200/1600 :) no throttle 50 c max temp.
 
^^ What he said, under water these cards pull like 50 watts less at full load due to less leakage. Im going with an AIO/G10 on my reference card. Bottom card is non ref and MUCH quieter at load.
 
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