PowerColor R9 295X2 Review

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We’re massive fans of the trend towards simpler box art, and the PowerColor 295X2 definitely gets the job done. The front is both bold and yet minimalist, and the reverse has all the information you need. Although we might all understand how a liquid-cooler of this nature works, not everyone does and so the decision to make it clear is a good one. The noise benefits alone make it worthy of purchase over an air cooler. Silence is golden.

Inside the box everything is very well packaged as you would expect from a card at this end of the price spectrum. High density foam keeps everything in place, and the radiator is positioned in such as way as to insure the tubing doesn’t get kinky.

      

      

We did say that the power requirements of the R9 295X2 are steep, and certainly there is a large warning notice ensuring you don’t try and run this off a unbranded 400W PSU. We’re pretty sure that this thing could eat a 400W PSU on its own.

      

It’s a refinement of the water-cooling option we’ve seen on a handful of graphics cards so far, and we can’t wait to find out how well this keeps two 290X GPUs cool. A monster backplate and all-metal shroud really add a sense of quality to proceedings. We’re not to sure if 120mm of radiator is enough to keep both the Hawaii XT cores cool. To be honest we would be uncertain about using a single width rad to keep one GPU cool. So there is plenty of pressure on PowerColor to keep everything in check.

   

It’s a great looking card. We like an all-metal construction, especially on a high-end model. The extra rigidity it provides, as well as the aura of quality, definitely ticks all our boxes.

      

Designed around a need for a 4K compatible graphics card, the 295X2 doesn’t only cover a 4K display, but with DVI and four DisplayPorts it has all your needs catered for, whether it’s a single monster display, or a whole wall of monitors in Eyefinity. It’s particularly pleasing to see it’s rigidly keeping to the dual-slot format as well.