MSI Radeon R9 290X Lightning 4 GB Review 35

MSI Radeon R9 290X Lightning 4 GB Review

Value & Conclusion »

Thermal Camera & Fan Noise Recording

In this section, we bring you an audio-visual representation of the card's thermals and noise output. The video below is a recording of the card in both idle and load, while independent instruments log audio, thermal-imaging, optical video, and numeric sensor data in real time. We set up a new rig with a passively-cooled Core "Haswell" processor and ASUS TUF Sabertooth motherboard to make it possible. We also used ASUS's Thermal Armor kit with the motherboard to ensure that heat from the motherboard doesn't obscure our thermal imaging. Our instruments include a FLIR-made thermal camera with a resolution of 320x240 pixels, a normal optical camera, a sensitive shotgun microphone, and GPU-Z, to log the GPU's sensor data.

The thermal camera also serves as a non-contact thermometer. Its crosshairs are trained on the graphics card and will dynamically follow the highest temperature. The audio portion of the video is only to illustrate the tonal quality and the relative change from idle to load, not the absolute volume produced. It is to give you an idea of how the card revs its fans up as a reaction to increasing temperatures.


We start by putting load on the card at around timecode 0:15, and you can, if you really concentrate, hear a little bit of coil noise from that point on, but it is very light and should barely be noticeable once the card has been installed into a case.

You can hear how the fan revs up once the card heats up, peaking at over 2100 RPM, which is certainly not a quiet experience.

The thermal camera shows no areas that are extremely hot, and the VRMs on the front of the card are cooled well as they only reach around 70°C.
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Nov 27th, 2024 09:29 EST change timezone

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