HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X2 OC 3GB Overclocked Video Card Review

Temperature Test

The temperature of the core is pulled from MSI Afterburner with the max reading used after a completed run of 3DMark Vantage at the Performance preset.

Looking at the temperature numbers, you can see that we're sitting right in the middle of the pack here. Sixty-six Celsius at load isn't bad at all considering the extra voltage that is being run through the card to achieve the strong core overclock.

Sound Test

Pulling out the TES 1350A Sound Level Meter, we quickly find ourselves yelling into the top of it to see how loud we can be.

After five minutes of that, we get a bit more serious, and place the device two CM away from the fan on the card to find the maximum noise level of the card when idle (2D mode), and in load (3D mode).

Noise levels on the card are really strong, and come in at 58.8 dB under load. You can see we're sitting a decent chunk down into the bottom half of the graph here. Both numbers help show just how strong the IceQ X2 cooler is when it comes to cooling these cores; even when more voltage is thrown into the mix.