Preview and Gallery
Here we get to look at the amazing piece of engineering that is the PCS+ R9 290X. I would like to point out that the cooler feels sturdier than any other cooler I have seen and it is entirely made out of metal. The PCS+ R9 290X 8GB is a bit longer than other cards thanks to the cooler. Although the PCB itself is the same size as the reference design, the PCS+ cooler pushes the length to 29.5 cm or 11.6 inches. The heavy cooler requires the PCS+ R9 290X to have a back plate, otherwise sagging would be an issue in the future. The back plate has an anodized aluminum finish that looks great under lighting and really calls for attention; the white Powercolor logo is a nice touch. Other notable features include a handy bios switch, something found in most Hawaii cards.
The impressive PCS+ R9 290X utilizes a copper heatsink and four 8mm heat pipes to cool the toasty Hawaii chip plus the extra memory modules. As you can see from the slideshow, two sets of cooling fins are used to spread out the heat. As for VRM cooling, the PCS+ R9 290X keeps its massive 8GB of memory cool by using some of the best thermal tape I have ever seen; it is thick and durable and does not disintegrate when touched. All the memory modules are covered by the blue thermal tape. The DC-DC converters on the back end of the card have their own separate aluminium heat sink. Check out the thermal images in the temperature section to see how these components keep the PCS+ R9 290X cool.
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