Overclocking
GPU-Z with Max Overclock
Overclocking is essentially free performance! With the amazing PCS+ cooler, overclocking software thresholds will be the limiting factor in the overclock rather than the temperature. Using MSI Afterburner. I was able to push the PCS+ R9 290X 8GB to 1175Mhz core clock and 1575Mhz memory clock and was able to maintain stability throughout stress testing, gaming, and benchmarks. I was not able to push the voltage any further due to MSI Afterburner’s limits and was stuck at 1175Mhz, which to put in to perspective is just 25Mhz less than our watercooled reference R9 290X with a custom bios.
 Aida64 Benchmark Overclocked |
 Aida64 Benchmark Stock Clocks |
Here we show some raw performance numbers when we went from stock to overclock. It is quite impressive what a couple of minutes of tweaking can do. It is a significant increase in all areas, especially for Memory Copy where it went from 240539 MB/s to 291602 MB/s!
Installation
I would like to take a look at the size of this card; the board dimensions are the same as the reference R9 290X, however, this is NOT a reference board. I was a disappointed when I found out that my EK waterlock would not fit this card for further testing. Some of the components, specifically the capacitors, were larger than reference. As for typical air cooling use, the installation for the PCS+ R9 290X was the same as any other high end graphics card. It is important to take note that due to the cooler the card extend to 11.6 inches and takes up just slightly more than 2 PCI slots. If you were planning to crossfire these and your motherboard has 3.0 PCI slots within 2 slots of each other, I would reconsider how you would fit these cards.
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