Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-X OC R9 280X 3GB

The Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-10 OC R9 280X is the most expensive R9 280X graphics carte featured in our roundup, with a retail value of $340. Still for that coin Sapphire has made plenty of enhancements, which include their Vapor-10 technology, Tri-X cooling, black diamond choke, full solid cap pattern, Dual BIOS and factory overclocking.

Sapphire has matched Gigabyte with an 1100MHz core overclock, while they left the retentivity at 6000MHz.

Sapphire's Tri-10 cooling solution is what gives the company the conviction to push its R9 280X so far. The Tri-X cooler features three 85mm fans, each with nine blades pushing air over a very large heatsink, which extends beyond the length of the PCB. The three fans are controlled by the PCB's single fan header, so there'southward no independent speed adjustment.

A copper baseplate for the GPU is connected to five heat pipes within the main heatsink; two of these loop back on themselves while the remaining three extend out into the secondary heatsink to the side. With densely packed fins in both heatsinks there's enough of surface expanse for heat dissipation. The heatsink as well draws estrus away from the retentivity chips and MOSFETs via thermal pads and an aluminum plate that'south soldered to the fins at various points.

The Tri-X cooling solution also employs Sapphire'southward Vapor-X technology. Vapor Chamber Technology is based on the same principles as heatpipe technology. A liquid coolant is vaporized at a hot surface, the resulting vapor is condensed at a cold surface so the liquid is returned to the hot surface. The recirculation process is controlled past a wick organization.

Sapphire Vapor-Ten flattens the whole organization into a slim chamber which is mounted in contact with the surface of the GPU.

As impressive every bit the Vapor-X Tri-X cooler is, in that location is one drawback. As was the case with the HIS carte du jour, the Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-Ten OC R9 280X is excessively long at 308mm and volition have compatibility issues with most mid-sized tower cases. When yous consider that the Asus and MSI cards measure out 265mm long, it seems similar a bad idea for HIS and Sapphire to make their cards over 40mm longer. Although 4cm might non sound like a lot, it is certainly the deviation between fitting a graphics card in many mid-sized cases and not beingness able to.

Like HIS, nosotros observe that MSI has also upgraded the Vapor-Ten Tri-X OC R9 280X from the standard 6-pin/8-pin PCIe power connector configuration to include a pair of 8-pin connectors for better overclocking performance.

Sapphire has as well modified the outputs simply as Asus did to include two dual-link DVI outputs along with HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.