AMD Unveils the Liquid-Cooled, Dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2 At $1,500 146
wesbascas (2475022) writes "This morning, AMD unveiled its latest flagship graphics board: the $1,500, liquid-cooled, dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2. With a pair of Hawaii GPUs that power the company's top-end single-GPU Radeon R9 290X, the new board is sure to make waves at price points that Nvidia currently dominates. In gaming benchmarks, the R9 295X2 performs pretty much in line with a pair of R9 290X cards in CrossFire. However, the R9 295X2 uses specially-binned GPUs which enable the card to run with less power than a duo of the single-GPU cards. Plus, thanks to the closed-loop liquid cooler, the R9 295X doesn't succumb to the nasty throttling issues present on the R9 290X, nor its noisy solution."
Crypto (Score:1)
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Or a Rage II Pro!
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And they all sold out instantly and the Litecoin difficulty went up ...
Are there any dual-chip cards that cryptominers actually buy? (honest question, I don't know). Back in my youthful gaming-nut days, dual GPU cards, because of some mixture of worse economies of scale and 'people who absolutely must have the bleeding edge will pay, so why not?', always commanded rather more than twice the price of two equivalent single-GPU cards (and sometimes clocked worse, as well, just to keep the heat down).
Now that everything is PCIe, and the low bandwidth requirements of mining allo
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Now that everything is PCIe, and the low bandwidth requirements of mining allow you to stuff even x1 slots with GPU cards, I'd have to imagine that your miner would be willing to pay only a very small premium to conserve slots.
I'd imagine (I've done as much research as you have, apparently) that it's difficult to come by PCIEx1 cards with meaningful GPUs on them. Only some subset can be hacked from x16 to x1.
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You don't need the memory bandwidth for Scrypt mining, so you can use whatever card you want in a x1 slot, with the help of a riser/cable.
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You don't need the memory bandwidth for Scrypt mining, so you can use whatever card you want in a x1 slot, with the help of a riser/cable.
Not all cards' BIOS will permit that.
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Nowadays? No.
A few years ago? Yes.
Before everyone jumped on the bandwagon, 5970s had similar price/performance to 5850s while being superior in pretty much every other way.
4 cards == 8 GPUs off a $45 board with x1 to x16 riser cables.
Fans that could actually run 24/7 for years without dying.
Lower power usage.
Re:Crypto (Score:4, Informative)
Even a low-ish end GPU is many times faster than the fastest CPU.
CPU's are optimized to make single threads go fast; GPU's are essentially massively parallel processors (hundreds of "cores") optimized to make a collection of threads doing similar things go very, very fast.
The conventional wisdom in my field of computational physics is that one GPU = 30 or 40 CPU cores.
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I should qualify: by "low-ish end" I mean "low end compared to what we put in supercomputers". I don't mean Intel integrated graphics here; I mean things like an Nvidia 760 GTX or something -- cards that budget conscious gamers use.
Yep (Score:2)
Bought the first one when I realized that Bitcoin app I'd accidentally installed a few months earlier on my server had produced something I could flog for 10 bucks and I'd earnt myself a free card. Then used that one to cover the cost of the second one.
Quit mining when difficulty meant I was pulling in less than a BTC a day.. Looking back..
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That can't be a good idea. Litecoin has steadily dropped from $25 to $11 during 2014, after briefly touching $44 late last year. I don't see any reason why the downward trend in bitcoin or litecoin price will reverse.
I can't imagine that a $1500 card plus electricity costs are ever going to pay for themselves.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force... (Score:5, Funny)
as if millions of Litecoins suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Just imagine (Score:2)
A Raspberry-Pi Beowulf cluster of those R9 295X2's.
18 pages, really?? (Score:2)
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These look like standard hose barbs to me:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/4/H/430433/original/radeon-r9-295x2-blown-up.png [bestofmicro.com]
http://media.bestofmicro.com/4/J/430435/original/radeon-r9-295x2-pieces.jpg [bestofmicro.com]
You can also see that the GPUs are cooled serially and not in parallel.
Tomshardware doesn't break out the GPU temps individually,
so we don't know if the second GPU is running hotter.
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Do not want (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't find any need for the $1000 Titan card, doubtful I will find a need for a $1500 flavor either.
Patience works well. Wait a year or two and you can pick up this awesome horsepower at a fraction of the price. Pick up any games that require this much horsepower at the same time and you're golden. It's similar to how I buy games today. I'll be damned if I'm paying full price for what is effectively Beta III. I'll let them sit for a while, let the world test it and complain, watch all the patches get applied and ultimately pick it up when it goes on sale for $20 or so.
I learned long ago to quit buying bleeding edge gear.
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The Titan was a clever thing from Nvidia: a product marketed to gamers that the budget supercomputing crowd is buying. This means that they don't have to provide professional-level support for the things, but can sell them at semi-professional-level prices. They give top-end performance and are (as far as we can tell -- we have a few dozen of the things) as stable as anything else.
An Nvidia K20X costs many thousands of dollars and is actually slower than a $1K Titan (by about 10%, according to lattice QCD b
13 watts at idle is better than I expected (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just how much power does a high-end computer need to idle, serve files, run non-demanding background processes, etc.? Millions of computers do just that, for many hours every day.
Serving files, best done by something dedicated. In my case, I am using an ultra-low-power solution, a Pogoplug connected to the disk via USB3. Performance will not exactly set the world alight; via my crappy dlink GigE switch I'm getting about 10-15MB/sec real-world as reported by various file managers. Performance is better via samba than nfs, but I haven't looked into why at all. The disk spins down when not in use and the pogoplug uses jack diddly for power.
Most of the rest of the idle consumption could
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It's been there since the 5000 series. I had one of the high idle power 4000s, but they fixed it with the 5000s. Shame the promised driver update to reduce power on the 4000s never materialized.
Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:5, Informative)
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Liquid cooling sucks. That's why we all have air cooled engines rated at 25hp in our cars nowadays. Oh wait. No we don't.
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Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:5, Insightful)
I design cooling systems for high-heat semiconductors.
So we can expect you to be pretty knowledgeable about stuff, not overlooking important details, and understanding the various limitations imposed by each method...
Guess what? Liquid cooling SUCKS as you're still limited by how fast you can transfer the heat to the air ultimately.
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Yeah, I was like "WTF?" any mechanical engineer worth his salt appreciates the benefits of being able to relocate the heat exchanger.
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".except what we find out is that actually you only have just enough knowledge to look stupid because you overlooked important details such as the obvious limitations imposed by having your radiator mounted directly on the device being cooled."
Yet you'll gladly stuff that radiator INSIDE THE COMPUTER CASE and cause premature heat failure of other components inside, like your motherboard.
BRILLIANT!
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I have one case with liquid cooling, and old Smilodon.
I get better cooling with my graphite-core aluminum fin spreader, outperforming a solid copper Itanium II heat sink.
Come back when you have to deal with 1,000w in a 50mmx50mm package and need to keep junction temps BELOW 50C.
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Guess what? Liquid cooling SUCKS as you're still limited by how fast you can transfer the heat to the air ultimately.
...unless your only goal is to overcome the limitations of working in a space the size of a graphics card.
In which case it ROCKS!
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unless your only goal is to overcome the limitations of working in a space the size of a graphics card. In which case it ROCKS!
Unless the water cooling system is built on the graphics card itself, in which it case, it sucks.
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Only to still replace it with air cooling further down the line.
Honest question: how would you build a consumer system that doesn't rely on air cooling eventually? Even if you use phase change, you still need to dump that heat somewhere, so unless you use evaporative cooling or have access to a practically infinite heat sink such as a river or geothermal exchange system (both of which are completely impractical for consumer level equipment), air cooling is literally the only option. Hell, even most (and by most I mean practically all) air conditioning systems use air co
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"Honest question: how would you build a consumer system that doesn't rely on air cooling eventually?"
You don't, pretty much, excepting what you've listed (heat sinking to earth, evaporative cooling.)
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Liquid is substantially less elegant; but it's just simple plumbing to set up and it still a
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Now, as for the idiots who introduce the cost and complexity of a liquid loop, all so they can use a radiator no larger than a simple heatpipe-based aircooler... Those guys are just idiots.
If they're cooling the entire system, they're also cutting their fan count down to 1. It's expensive, but it cuts a lot of the noise out of the system. Also, you can get pretty big radiators, for example a motorcycle oil cooler has considerably more area than you can reasonably get onto your processor.
I've never bothered, but I'm starting to think about it again because my computer is noisy and I have a motorcycle oil cooler lying around. Maybe I'll fill the system with some of this magical Ravenol crap the
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The main point of enthusiasm is that liquid cooling is easier to do than phase change cooling with hobbyist
There are several advantages. One key one is that coolant pipes are longer and much, much, much more flexible than heatpipe pipes. This means you can easily place the large radiator on the edge of the case, with the fan blowing outwards. This has substantial advantages than the heatpipe coolers which recircuate air withing the case and rely on other fans to cycle fresh air.
The cost and complexity is lo
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The main point of enthusiasm is that liquid cooling is easier to do than phase change cooling with hobbyist
There are several advantages. One key one is that coolant pipes are longer and much, much, much more flexible than heatpipe pipes. This means you can easily place the large radiator on the edge of the case, with the fan blowing outwards. This has substantial advantages than the heatpipe coolers which recircuate air withing the case and rely on other fans to cycle fresh air.
That really sounds like a flaw in your case than the radiators contained within it. Back when we had blow-down heatsinks instead of tower ones, cases would come with side vents and shrouds to provide cool air directly to the fans. If you open up a server case, chances are it will have a shroud that covers both CPUs and all your memory, ducting air directly from several of the mid-plane fans. You can get cases that move the power supply to the bottom, so the CPU is directly in the top rear corner of the c
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That really sounds like a flaw in your case than the radiators contained within it.
That's how most non-server cases are made. It's much easier to move a radiator to the edge than to faff with air channels and stuff.
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Only to still replace it with air cooling further down the line.
Sure, admittedly so, of course. The point, though, is clearly to be able to use a larger or otherwise better air cooler in the end, which I can certainly see being the point in this case, seeing is how the PCI specification gives too little room for a proper cooler on the card itself, especially if it's going to fit in only two slots.
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Plenty of graphite-based heat sink solutions that work better than copper. I've got a graphite-core aluminum fin LGA775 heat sink. Tears up my solid copper Itanium II cooler.
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Not really, due to how carbon fibers tend to conduct and radiate heat - only at their ends.
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I design cooling systems for high-heat semiconductors. Guess what? Liquid cooling SUCKS as you're still limited by how fast you can transfer the heat to the air ultimately.
I also design cooling systems for high power semiconductor circuits. You could say liquid cooling sucks, not because of its cooling ability, but because it adds complexity, expense and can require more maintenance depending on its setup. We try to air cool whatever possible, but once the power density gets too high or the temperature requirements too narrow, we switch to water cooling or heat pipes. Even if you are just moving the heat a couple inches, in many setups that gives you loads more room to bui
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I really hope this post is a joke.
Not sure: my sarcasm detector is on the fritz today.
Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much the thermal conductivity of the GPU->water vs. GPU->copper heatsink that's the direct benefit. It's using the water to carry the heat to a much larger radiator rather than having to have the heatsink directly on the GPU (which greatly limits its size).
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Its size isn't so much the matter (though it helps) it is about moving the heat to be radiated someplace else, preferably no where near the thing you want to actually cool. This is where water or liquid cooling come into play, as a heat transportation medium.
Heatpipes is another halfassed way to do it, though not as efficient and limited in range.
The only issue with liquid cooling is a leak obviously, and if the pump ever fails, your small copper and water heatsink isn't going to perform very well.
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In fact, heatpipes being a form of phase change cooling, are much more efficient than pumped water at short and medium ranges. The only issue with heatpipes is that the average hobbyiest can't make them themselves, and they require static routing.
There's no problem with convecting your heat near the thing you actually want to cool, so long as you can get enough airflow there.
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While generally true that really depends on how hot things are going to get relative to the thing you wish to cool. Too hot is too hot. Also though a bit off topic is that the hotter it gets the more and more airflow that is required. At a certain point not only are mechanical fans loud, but so is the moving air, not to mention the literal vacuum cleaner/leaf blower you just created.
I this case (sorry no pun intended) making a 1500$ ridiculous video card that takes your two biggest hottest chips that use th
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Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:5, Funny)
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He was told a Steam box is great for playing games...
Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:5, Informative)
Oh dear.
Water flows, due to being liquid. Copper, on the other hand, is a solid at any temperature you're going to have at home.
You circulate the water between the heat-producing surface and a heat-dissipating radiator.
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>You circulate the water between the heat-producing surface and a heat-dissipating radiator.
Which means you still need air contact and air flow to cool off the radiator.
So you just waste more power on an already inefficient cooling process.
Might as well be a fool and use a Peltier inside the computer at that pint.
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Could you use gallium instead? Granted, gallium is a lot more expensive than water, but if you are the type to spend $1500 on video cards, you clearly have money to burn.
Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:5, Funny)
Thermal conductivity of water: approx 0.58 Thermal conductivity of copper: approx 401 The only reason to have water cooling in anything is to brag to your friends that you have water cooling. In reality, metal cooling works better.
Easy solution, Run your CPU at over 1,085 C and use molten copper as a coolant
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Umm why stop there? Why not run it at 2562 C and then you can use both liquid AND gas cooling, as the copper flows, evaporates and condenses.
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No it's not
1- Noise. I'm running a pair of Noctua NF-12 fans at medium speeds on the radiator of my Corsair H70 (the PSU fan makes more noise)
2- Capacity of liquid to move heat *much* faster than air
3- Weight on the motherboard. The little pump is much lighter than a 2 pound heatsink
Before installing that cooler, I couldn't get my E7200 (2.53) beyond 3.2 without insane temps. Now, I'm stable at 3.8 with 75C MAX, 4.1 will need a beefier radiator.
Besides, it's not that more expensive than high-end air
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So they violate the laws of physics? Amazing! Thermal conductivity is exactly the same in both directions.
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Thermal conductivity is exactly the same in both directions.
Well no, no it isn't. Because the thermal conductivity on the inward direction is based on the interface between two metals, and the outward direction is based on the interface between metal and air. See, one of the laws of thermodynamics is that heat energy always moves from hot to cold. So in fact, we do have an actual directionality to the heat flow; into the heat sink from the hot processor, and into the air from the heat sink. You fail both physics and English, and I suck at physics.
The rate of thermal
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Water cooling is far superior because water has a very high thermal capacity, so it stays cool over a much longer period than a metal heat sink.
Are you suggesting that heatsinks work by absorbing and storing the waste heat generated by the CPU?
Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:4, Interesting)
Thermal conductivity of water: approx 0.58 Thermal conductivity of copper: approx 401 The only reason to have water cooling in anything is to brag to your friends that you have water cooling. In reality, metal cooling works better.
The water (.58) replaces the air (.024) in the cooling setup, not the metal. Watercooling systems tend to have markedly smaller heatsinks, since they just don't need the same surface area(at the low end, just a copper plate with a flow chamber on top of it, some more complex designs use something more or less similar to a small air-cooled heatsink; but sealed for water to flow through.
Now, I think that there have been a few nutty-and-exotic liquid-metal cooling systems; but those are hampered by the fact that they just aren't better-enough than water for the money (the delta T of the CPU's package and the waterblock is still the same), pumping the (substantially denser) liquid metal is more energy intensive, and most candidates are either unpleasant or expensive, or both.
If you want something that won't go all hazmat on you if the system leaks; but won't harden in the cooler parts of the loop, 'Galinstan' is probably the best bet; but you sure don't make things cheap by making them ~ 20% indium.
If you are...aggressively risk tolerant... a nice Cesium/Potassium/Sodium alloy will stay liquid to almost -80 (celsius); but, um, not a good plan, OK. Straight Mercury works fine down to almost -60; but that stuff is dense and not particularly pleasant(plus, it amalgamates with a number of metals quite readily. You did check your waterblock, radiator, pump, and all other contact surfaces for compatibility, right?). If you aren't the kind of coward whose dishonor makes him cry about things like "my cooling system catching fire on exposure to air or water vapor", NaK is a lovely coolant.
Basically, for something that is such a pain in the ass, you'd better be getting results substantially superior to normal air or water cooling, which you'll only get with active heat pumps that can actually pull the CPU below room temperature. At that point, the rather low freezing points of any available metal alloy become an insurmountable problem. Other materials don't have quite the same thermal conductivity; but they'll be happy enough keeping things well below the -100.
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That's why cars and trucks are all directly air cooled right? Liquid cooling lets you increase the surface area of your radiating element while moving it away from the important parts of your process, without using heat pipes (also liquid cooling) you can't get anywhere near the same surface area as a radiator on a CPU/GPU cooler. The only time you see direct air cooling is to cut costs or save space or weight.
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My last CPU upgrade in my desktop came with a fan that about doubled the noise from my system, and more when the CPU got cranked up. At suggestion of a friend, I installed a closed-loop water cooler on it (which cost me ~$70 IIRC). Night and day.
It actually runs cooler all the time (I was monitoring the temp before/after because I was curious) and the whole computer now makes less noise than before. When the furnace comes on, the sound of the air coming from the vent is actually louder, to put it in perspec
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Also, it is LIQUID cooled, not water cooled. I am sure they find better liquids than water, bonus points for them if it does not conduct electricity and therefore will not fry your computer if you spill it all over it, and if they can make it evaporate without leaving a residue.
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Re:here's how stupid this is (Score:4, Informative)
Mostly they use distilled (or if you are feeling fancy, deionized) water with some additive. You can add alcohol, but I would prefer an automotive coolant additive. You could use redline water wetter, for example. I'd just go ahead and install a normal automotive coolant, which comes in a variety of colors. I'd want a low-silicate coolant without any special additives. The old-fashioned green stuff (ethylene glycol) is my favorite. Use about 25 percent to retard corrosion. If you want to get really nerdy, mount a voltmeter in the system. Ground to the metal of the water block or the radiator and suspend the positive electrode in the coolant solution. If you're making more than about 100mV then change the coolant. The meter is under ten bucks, digital or analog. Use a stainless or brass electrode to reduce corrosion of the electrode itself. A screw of appropriate length pushed through the top of the reservoir and sealed with epoxy or goop (tm) will serve.
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Most closed loop cooling systems (at least for PC) use deionized water, with added fluorescents for colour in case of transparent tubing.
AFAIK, it's also common in custom builds.
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Guess where that heat ultimately dissipates any ways?
THE AIR.
It's like you failed thermodynamics in high school.
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Exactly - Pretty much everything is air-cooled. Even the frion in your fridge. It's just that it's easier to circulate some things than others.
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If you had a filter (say, RO) running all the time you could feed it through your water block :)
By that logic... (Score:2)
Might as well remove the radiator from your car, after all, it only gets cooled by the air, so you might as well just let air flow over the engine and it will be just as good.
Here, it looks like they are looking for additional heatsink and exhaust volume than they can fit in a dual-high form factor, meaning liquid transfer to the additional exhaust sink/fan. I personally think it a bit much in terms of GPU capabilities, but it doesn't mean it's totally silly.
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What the hell does this have to do with high performance 3D graphics cards? And which would you rather eat: oil, or food?