VisionTek cuts prices of liquid-cooled R9 290 graphics cards by $100

VisionTek this week announced a $100 (€73, £59) discount on its CryoVenom R290 and CryoVenom R290LE graphics cards that come with water-blocks and are designed for enthusiasts, who assemble custom cooling solutions. With a $100 discount, the custom-built graphics cards look rather attractive.

From now on and until the 3rd of June (or until card supplies last), VisionTek will provide a $100 discount on its CryoVenom R290 and CryoVenom R290LE graphics boards when acquired via its online store. As a result of the discount, the CryoVenom R9 290 now costs $500, whereas the limited edition factory-overclocked flavour of the graphics board is available for $550.

While the discounts seem to be significant, they were needed to keep the graphics cards attractive for buyers in the current market situation:

• The CryoVenom R9 290 graphics card is just a regular Radeon R9 290-based solution with AMD-recommended clock-rates and 4GB of memory, but with a water-block. $500 is the right price for it as it costs about the same amount of money to buy a Radeon R9 290 graphics board and a water-block for it.
• The CryoVenom R290LE limited edition graphics card comes with GPU overclocked to 1175MHz (up from 950MHz) and memory operating at 5800MHz. Such a graphics solution delivers performance that is higher or very close to that of the Radeon R9 290X, hence, the $550 price-point is completely justified (keeping in mind that VisionTek guarantees stability and reliability at high clock-rates).

As reported, VisionTek CryoVenom R290-series graphics cards come with specially-designed EKWB water-blocks featuring a narrow micro-channel fin and low pressure drop design. Enthusiasts, who build their PCs with liquid cooling themselves, only have to plug the card into their computers and connect tubes from their custom cooling systems to the water-block. The latter covers the Radeon R9 290 “Hawaii Pro” graphics processing unit itself, GDDR5 memory and the card's voltage regulation module (VRM). According to VisionTek, even under demanding in-game usage, the “card registers 125°F (51°C)”, which is claimed to be “up to 38 per cent cooler than a comparable air cooled card.”

Both graphics cards are hand-assembled and hand-tested. The CryoVenom R9 290-series boards are covered with a limited warranty. Like other Radeon R9 290-based graphics cards from different makers, VisionTek’s models come with a free copy of the Battlefield 4 video game.

Keep in mind that when you buy graphics cards from the U.S. while you are in the U.K. or Europe, you may need to pay taxes when importing your goods.

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KitGuru Says: It is interesting to note that back in April VisionTek said that only around a hundred of CryoVenom R290LE graphics boards would be made available. Either the company decided to manufacture more graphics adapters than it initially intended to, or the popularity of such cards has turned out to be much lower than expected originally…

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