Hi. I have an XFX Radeon R9 290x 4GB card with a reference cooler, purchased used. It works just fine, I've used Afterburner to set a decent fan curve, I think, and limited the temperature to 75C. Plus it's in a Coolermaster HAF X case with the side intake fan blowing on it. It's still very loud during gaming, and even just looking at this page the temperature is about 40C. I've looked everywhere for cooling options, so far the Morpheus 2 looks like the best, but I was hoping for something cheaper; after the cost of the Morpheus you have to add fans, and the necessary accessories to adapt those fans to your card, which seems to be the best option for fan control. I found an Arctic ACcelero Xtreme 3 for a little over $100 on Newegg, it's my understanding from an article on this site that it retailed for $75 new.
I guess my question is: Are there any other options? I don't intend to do any overclocking, I just want it to run efficiently, like a normal graphics card. And I'm on a budget. Small AIO liquid coolers are an alternative, I don't know if there are any made for this card, but they won't cool the vRAM and other components. I've seen some people have modded their reference coolers to omit the GPU heatsink and use an AIO instead, leaving the rest of the reference cooler intact. I'm not sure I'd have room in my case for the radiator: The best spot for it would be the exhaust fan next to the CPU, I've never used any liquid cooling before, so I don't know how much air could still pass through to assist cooling the CPU. I'm open to suggestions though!
Thanks in advance.
I guess my question is: Are there any other options? I don't intend to do any overclocking, I just want it to run efficiently, like a normal graphics card. And I'm on a budget. Small AIO liquid coolers are an alternative, I don't know if there are any made for this card, but they won't cool the vRAM and other components. I've seen some people have modded their reference coolers to omit the GPU heatsink and use an AIO instead, leaving the rest of the reference cooler intact. I'm not sure I'd have room in my case for the radiator: The best spot for it would be the exhaust fan next to the CPU, I've never used any liquid cooling before, so I don't know how much air could still pass through to assist cooling the CPU. I'm open to suggestions though!
Thanks in advance.