HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X² Overview
Selling online for $279.99 (NewEgg), the HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X² OC 3GB Video Card is around $20 ~ $30 higher than most other R9 280 3GB video cards but not the most expensive model I have found. Designed and priced to compete with the NVIDIA GTX 760 video cards, the R9 280 is equivalent to a Radeon HD7950. Unfortunately I don’t have a GTX 760 video card to compare to so in the tests the HIS Radeon R9 280 video card will be tested amongst a GTX 560Ti and a GTX 770 along with other AMD Radeon video cards.
HIS first introduced the IceQ X2 VGA cooler with their HD 7970 GHz edition video card. This is a similar sized unit and follows the same design brief but now comes in gold. Measuring 29.7cm long and 14.3cm tall it is quite the case filler. Weight will be an issue but thankfully HIS have taken this into consideration and have built support into the cooler design.
From the side view we can the 6mm heatpipes used in this design to take heat from the core into the heatsink. At the thickest point the HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X² OC 3GB Video Card is 4.4cm thick. HIS have chosen length over girth in the cooler design to maintain a 2-slot thickness. This model requires both an 8-pin and a 6-pin power connector from your PSU.
The HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X2 OC 3GB video card features 2x mini display ports, a full size HDMI port and a Dual Link DVI-I connector.
The IceQ X2 cooler is an open air design that will inevitably exhaust warm air inside your PC case. There are vents on the backplate to take some of this air outside of your case but you will need to rely on you PC case cooling system to disperse ~95% of the hot air generated. Five 6mm heatpipes take the heat from the GPU via a solid copper heatsink into the aluminium fin array.
With the IceQ X2 cooler removed from the HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X2 OC 3GB video card we see an integrated component/mosfet/memory cooler that also doubles as a PCB support plate. With a decent fan pointed in its direction there is nothing stopping you from fitting a universal GPU water block to this card.
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