CES 2014: VisionTek CRYOVENOM AMD R9 290 Liquid Cooled Graphics Card
VisionTek was on hand at CES 2014 in Las Vegas this year and Legit Reviews were among the few invited to their Party at the Minus 5 Ice bar in the Monte Carlo. The Minus 5 Ice Bar was the perfect place to show off their latest addition to their product line, the CryoVenom R9 290 graphics card. What makes the VisionTek CryoVenom rise above the crowd is the minor detail of being fully water cooled. The CryoVenom R9 290 offers up to 38% cooler temperatures over the stock cooling solution, as well as performance gains as much as 24% faster than a stock card!
VisionTek boasts that the CryoVenom is also nearly silent, which while technically accurate you will still need a handful of fans on the radiator of your choice. Though should still be quieter than the stock squirrel cage from the standard R9 290’s.
One of our questions to VisionTek was why they chose the R9 290 rather than the R9 290X. It boiled down to a price/performance issue. VisionTek said they were able to exceed the performance of the R9 290X with the CryoVenom, while being able to keep the price below the R9 290X. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, the VisionTek CryoVenom R9 290 Liquid Cooled Graphics Card comes with a one year warranty, if you were to add a waterblock to a reference AMD R9 290 you would technically void the warranty.
“Overclock Certified and Custom Shop Built
To assure stable overclocked performance, the FurMark GPU stress utility is employed to put a 100% load on each CryoVenom R9 290s GPU for an extended time period to determine the optimum overclock setting with a 5% safe headroom. Those unique, certified overclock specifications are entered onto a build sheet that is personally signed by the VisionTeks Custom Shop team member that built and tested the CryoVenom card. Each card is then extensively pressure tested to ensure leak-free cooling reliability.”