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The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.
Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 60 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
The Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 cooler is actually very good, holding a load temperature of 73c in this confined Fractal Design chassis.
Now for the bad news.
If you read KitGuru regularly then you will already know what we think about AMD's R9 290 and R9 290x reference solutions. We do NOT like the reference coolers that AMD have adopted for their R9 290 and R9 290X graphics cards. Follow this hyperlink to read more about this.
The reference R9 290 is linked into the driver and Catalyst Control Center. The fan speed is limited to a maximum of 47 percent while the software simultaneously holds a maximum default temperature of 95c under load.
Obviously this continually running 95c GPU peak negatively affects ambient chassis temperatures as heat is expelled from the rear of the R9 290 PCB throughout the Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX chassis. After several hours gaming, the motherboard temperatures are higher than we would like to see after long periods of gaming.
Unfortunately Furmark shows that the R9 290 core is throttling under heavy load (dropping to around 800mhz frequently). Again, if you want to read more about this, visit this page.
Well its a lovely looking little system, nice routing too on the cables.
I can concur, the R9 290 is a monster. I bought one and had to return it after a few days, its loud as hell and way too hot running. I think if MESH had used a GTX770 or something like that from MSI it would have worked a lot better. Reference AMD cards are sucky.
I knew it would be too hot going on the list at the start. I have that case, and I do like it, but its going to struggle with that GPU, even larger cases are although they have more room for the hot air to move around, not hang over the mobo.
A custom Palit GTX760 would be ideal IMO.