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AMD R9 290X Fan Noise & Temps: How Hot & Loud Is It?

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Updated: November 4, 2013
R9 290X Noise

AMD’s latest flagship card is making headlines and obviously selling like ice cubes in “Death Valley” as it seems that for those waiting for AMD’s best of the best card they just can’t get enough of them on the shelves to satisfy the thirsty.

Every company seems to go through the holy crap that card is loud phase before developing something better to cool as seen by NVIDIA in the past and now AMD has once again released a beast of card that sacrifices the joys of silence in trade for a cooling solution that works. Like the 7990, the R9 290X is a very loud card if you want to run the fans at any decent speed to get solid performance. Check out the video we made showing the cards sound levels increase as we up the fan speeds on the card. We are working on buying a decibel reader for our next series of videos, but this was recorded on a very good microphone and even though it is not scientifically based, you can still get the idea of how loud it is.

The only drawbacks to having a card that runs this hot is that systems without really good airflow, such as SFF and other small form factor systems may not be an accommodating home for the AMD R9 290X right out of the box in its reference designed cards. The card is designed to run hot, but this in itself is a strange twist of events as who really wants a hot card in their system? When I posted a video of the card running at different speeds many AMD fans seemed quite angry that I did not mention past generation NVIDIA cards that also ran like lawnmowers on a monster soda, but that is the thing and in your question is your answer, that was the past, this is now.

Plus some folks should lighten up a bit its not like in the videos we are trying to insult or degrade AMD, we just love to poke fun at technology and if and when NVIDIA has another leaf blower we will poke some fun at them so relax this is not a war it’s just video cards. Now with that out of the way it also seems that many fans have per-accepted their fate of buying a liquid cooling system, but c’mon my friends having to buy a liquid cooler just to have the card run its best leaves out a lot of would be users who neither have the cash or the know how to build a liquid cooled system. The AMD R9 290X is an enthusiasts card for sure and many people will not care if the card is loud and proud as long as the cards perform, and out of the box just ran at its defaults clocks the card is very fast.

Performance degradation happens when the cards internal temperature reaches a certain point and if you try and push the reference card too far you will most likely burn the card or get serious performance hits. We ran the card at 3 different speeds 25-50 and 75% and you can see just how loud the R 290X gets in its reference designed and cooled cards like the MSI card we tested here. Non-reference cards are coming and obviously they will have better cooling solutions. MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA and of course ASUS will all have their own flavor of cards to offer up, and if you do not want to have to buy a liquid cooling kit I would wait for one of those cards to make a purchase. AMD will catch up and have better cooling solutions next generation, but this was just too much fun to not have a little fun with. Thanks for reading and watching Tech Of Tomorrow, more tests and AMD R9 290X goodness coming soon.

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  • http://www.merobotodo.com/ benito tocamelo

    The Question is can i fry an egg on it?

    • Serpent of Darkness

      The “answer” is both NVidia and AMD Graphic Cards can fry eggs on it. They both have a power-envelope past 200 watts. Now whether it’s 270 Watts NVidia versus 300 Watts AMD, or 263 Watts NVidia versus 290 Watts AMD, they’re both going to be hot. It’s just unrealistic to think neither will be hot. The question then becomes, how good are both heat-sink designs going to transfer and push that internal energy off the graphic card. Quite frankly, it won’t be a significant difference between the two. The ideology from NVidia is highest performance at less power in different scenarios. AMD it’s more power, more performance, less time needed for work to be done. This is why you see a difference in noise and temperature levels with respect to power consumption. NVidia wants to be the conservative, economy class car with a race car’s performance. AMD wants to be the Ferrari performance with a more radical approach. In the end, it won’t really matter. If people feel their air-cooling solutions isn’t enough, they could simply go with a water-cooling block. I’ve seen AMD Cards perform better, with lower temperatures on Koolance Blocks versus NVidia. Seen a 6990 push 1060 Mhz core with only 48 to 50 deg C at full GPU Load. Keep in mind, the 6990 core stock frequency is under 900 Mhz.

      • GH0ST_SE7EN

        1) You’re wrong about both being equally as hot given the same power consumption and the same cooler. If an Nvidia and AMD were both at 250W, with the same cooler, I could guarantee that the AMD would run hotter.

        2) Your car analogy is terrible. Nvidia is like a 560hp Ferrari (well engineered, efficient, quiet, race car performance), the AMD is a 600hp fixed-up Honda Civic (cheap, loud, not fuel efficient, race car performance).

        • Serpent of Darkness

          1. I disagree, and I think you’re wrong. I’m not implying that both are “equally hot.” That’s a misunderstanding on your end. On the other hand, I am saying that you can’t ignore reality, and say that NVidia cards don’t generate heat. If something doesn’t generate heat, it doesn’t do work (Force x distance). Ya there’s going to be a small temperature difference, but unrealistically, you can’t say that the NVidia Cards, on stock air-cooling solutions, can’t cook an egg either. I’m simply stating, while other people are taking cracks at the RX9-290x because it has a higher temperature, that NVidia cards can do the same. I’ve own both cards from both brands. GTX Titan, Asus ARES 2, GTX 480s in 3way SLI, 6990s, 4970x2s, etc… I remember back in the days when the GTX 580s pushed 89 degs c on SWTOR, when it came out on it stock, air-cooling solutions. RX9-290x. Even if it pulls 93 degs c on load, it’s not a big deal. Saying you can cook an egg on it, and ignore the fact that you can do it on the NVidia Graphic Card, is just a sign of some one losing touch with reality…
          2. You’re taking it out of perspective in a sense where we have one card, the RX9-290x which is made to be an extreme, gaming, graphic processing card, and the GTX 780 that has the heart of a race car, but it has a touch of conservative aspects of it with a premium price. Now if you took that Ferrari to the race track, tweak it, change the suspensions. You’re not really caring about how quiet the engine is, or how efficient the mileage is on the road. You’re only caring about it’s quarter-times and high RPMs. That’s the point. NVidia has a more conservative outlook on it while building a racer car-like video card. NVidia isn’t a card that’s completely designed to push maximum extreme, peak performance. Throw conservative ideas like reducing power consumption and temperature out the window. AMD does this. You can see it with the FX9590, you can see this with the increased power consumption. So it wouldn’t seem un-natural to think that AMD cards would be power-hungry, high temperature cards for higher peak performance.
          Would a Yamaha R6R 07 High rev (13,500 rpms), 600 cc, street-bike be a better a comparison with an Honda 6RR, same year, with a more linear rpm to horsepower curve. Would that be a better example to get my point across when you compare AMD and NVidia, 2013 generation video cards? You came up with the Honda Civic… Old Honda Civics, they have their goods and bads. They aren’t bad cars. Some models were actually copied from BMW cars. Newer ones are a lot better at efficiency.

          • GH0ST_SE7EN

            I agree with your general points. I honestly just think that with the same cooler, an OCed 780 (to match 290X performance levels) will be substantially cooler and quieter than a 290X. The 290X is just a poorly designed die that loses too much power to inefficiencies/heat. I guess in other words, Nvidia can reach the same performance levels with less power, less noise, and heat.

      • Koobecaf Gnikcuf

        serious attitude from a AMD fan

  • OPA

    Waiting for the GTX 780Ti and the non reference R9 290X cards hopefully temps will go down a little.

    • Serpent of Darkness

      NVidia will just come out with non-reference GTX 780 Ti (Titans) to counter RX9-290x non-reference cards. It’s nice that NVidia finally started releasing “full Titans,” full 2880 Cuda Core 28 nm GK110s, but it doesn’t seem significant versus the K6000 with a full 12 GB VRam frame-buffer. Even with 3 GBs on the GTX 780 Ti, it doesn’t seem like NVidia is giving more to it’s consumer-base for roughly $649 to $799. I’ve got the impression, they are probably selling off their left over inventory like Tegra4 on the G-Sync gimmick. Make a profit off of it because K6000 sales have probably declined, and NVidia will start producing Maxwell since it was suppose to launch early 2014.

  • Chuck Dorris

    It’s so freaking loud! #givemethecard

  • Keven Brochu

    Even with AMD’s Uber Mode, the fan don’t go over 55%, so the card shouldn’t get that loud under real world usage. Beside, the card is made to run at 95°C, so no, it won’t lose performance over time at this temperature, it’s designed to run that hot.

    • GH0ST_SE7EN

      Lol, are they using some awesome new architecture or material that increases the tolerances for temperature? No, otherwise, they would’ve mentioned it. AMD is basically just saying, “Hey, it still works at this temperature. Let’s tell everyone it was DESIGNED to do so.”

      • Keven Brochu

        “AMD have been very keen to point out that the 95ºC operating temperature of the Hawaii GPU is perfectly normal, and presents no tangible risk to the working life of the chip.”
        “I was told “95ºC is a perfectly safe temperature at which the GPU can operate for its entire life. There is no technical reason to reduce the target temperature below 95ºC.””
        - PC Gamer

        “AMD said that the 290X can run at that temperature perfectly safely for its entire life, and that there’s no technical reason to reduce the target temperature—though you could lower it via OverDrive.”
        - PCWorld

        • GH0ST_SE7EN

          The max GPU operating temp for a 780 is 95C, 770 98C. Hell it was 105C for the 280. My point is 95C has ALWAYS been safe but there is a reason NOBODY in their right mind would run a GPU at that temperature–WEAR AND TEAR. Sure a 290X can run at 95C for its entire life, but how long is that life? The length of the warranty? Lower temps means a graphics card that works for much longer.

          • Keven Brochu

            The GTX 780 never been designed to run at 95°C. Just like an AMD CPU shouldn’t run hotter than 65°C when stress-testing, while Intel CPUs are safe to go up to 80°C (stress testing, again). If AMD says it’s totally normal for the chip to run at 95°C, it’s because they manufactured the chip to handle such temperature.

          • Yaz Akiera

            sorry kevin, there is nothing called they designed the chip to run that hot, its well known that 80 degrees for any computer chip means you are about to enter the danger zone, maybe 290x is designed to handle 100-105 but not more, so by nature 95 wouldnt burn it out, but when thinking about it and take this case for an example, i have Intel i7 CPU which has the TJ max of 105, would i run it at 95 (by OCing the hell out of it) all times ALTHOUGH intel said its perfectly safe?!!

            you, i and everyone knows that 95 wouldnt burn it out, but it shortens the life span for any chip, you dont need AMD/Nvidia/Intel/… to tell you this, its obvious.

            dont get me wrong, i’m happy that AMD finally got back into competition, whether Nvidia or AMD fan, we customers are getting good prices with great gaming bundles, so we are winning either ways.

          • Keven Brochu

            As far as I know, neither AMD and Nvidia recommends running any of their cards (except the 290X, of course) at 95°C. Try to RMA a card like the 280X or a GTX 780, telling them you ran it at 95°C, I’m pretty sure they will deny your warranty request.
            Please tell me where Intel says it safe to run their CPUs at at 95°C ? For the i5-4670k, Intel specifies a maximum temperature of 72.72°C(at the heat spreader). Again, if Intel know you ran it hotter than that, they won’t replace your chip if damaged.
            It would just not be profitable at all for AMD to purposely make the cards run at a temperature that would hurt the GPU. That would just make them replace more cards under warranty, meaning big money losses. Usually, manufacturers purposely state a safe temperature that is a fair bit below the danger zone for that same reason, to avoid replacing too much cards under warranty. Look at the XFX version of the 290X, it has lifetime warranty. If the 95°C was hot enough to damage the card and shorten the lifespan, they wouldn’t offer a lifetime warranty. Common sense.

  • Matti M

    Interesting. I am buying a new PC by the end of AUGUST 2014. It might be intended to run at 70-100C though. But thats fricking hot temps. And when it goes more than 45% fan speed? PHEW! Its a plane taking off…. At 100%? my ears would be owned.

    • Yaz Akiera

      i guess non-reference designs will be cooler and quieter but not by far, lets wait and see.

      • Matti M

        yeap i agree

  • Cameron Beech

    Even when 780 ti is out then they will bring out ghz edition R9 290x. Which tend to be made by after market competitors

  • Valentin N

    I would like to see how it performance when it’s constant on 1GHz.

  • Techie

    Biased from the get go. Now compare it to other cards at 75%. You guys lost my respect. You all are Nvidia R&D paid. All one sided reviews lose credibility.

  • Toad

    Unsubscribed – lose of time reading Nvidia propaganda. What’s good about the card? What Nvidia card does it compare to at 95% fan? I bet you’ll have only great things to say about 780Ti and barely mention in passing its a rip off for the sheep who throw money around.

    • Fluency

      He’s doing this review because there are already so many other reviews saying great things about the card. We all know that it can pretty much outperform any other card. So he’s trying to educate people’s view points and give them the full story – the card is also really loud and hot. This might be a major decision point for people looking to buy the card and it definitely helps them pick what’s best for them. Just because a review doesn’t say all great things about the card doesn’t mean its ‘propaganda’. It’s simply buyer education.

  • mark

    I can’t wait until the GTX 800 series.