MSI Radeon R9 280 OC Review

Temperature

The Tahiti architecture found in the 280 isn’t as much of a space heater as the new Hawaii cards, but it still puts out a decent amount of heat that needs to be handled correctly. Luckily MSI’s Twin Frozr IV was able to quell the heat dramatically, giving us a full load temp of just 62 degrees in Furmark with the fans maxed out. If we let the card take things in to its own hands and leave the fan speed on auto, that temp jumps up to 71 with the fans spinning at just 60-70%. Idle temps were also low at just 39 degrees.

Noise

The Twin Frozr IV cooler was also great about keeping the noise down. At idle with the fans at only 18%, the card is essentially silent. I wasn’t able to even hear the GPU over the low hum of my case fans until about 35%. At 50% the card starts to become a little more noticeable, but still very quiet. Ramping it up to 75% the GPU is now the loudest fan in the case, but still very quiet compared to similar cooler setups. At 100% the volume still isn’t that bad, especially when compared to the howl of a traditional blower-style cooler. The fans at full tilt on the Twin Frozr IV are the about the same volume as Sapphire’s Dual-X cooler at 85%.

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