Club3D R9 280X royalKing 3GB Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look

Club3D’s royalKing R9 280X uses their CoolStream cooling solution which has three 8mm heat pipes. Two of those three 8mm heat pipes protrude from the top while only two protrude from the bottom. The two provided fans measure in at about 85mm in diameter and are PWM controlled.

The back comes with a backplate that has quite a tasteful “ace of clubs” cut out on the back of the GPU. The text on the backplate appears upside down but when mounted in a conventional chassis it will read the right way up.

An 8 pin and a 6 pin provide power to the GPU while two CrossFire fingers allow for up to 4 way CFX. The fact this card uses a very strict dual slot size is also useful for anyone looking to run multiple of these.

The bottom of the graphics card cooling solution is open and as we already mentioned two of the three 8mm heatpipes protrude out of the bottom. We can also see the memory chips on the PCB are cooled passively and made by SK Hynix.

The end of the CoolStream cooler is also open, like the bottom, where you can see the fan PWM connection.

The rear I/O is different to the “conventional” AMD R9 280X rear I/O which has HDMI/DVI/DVI/Full Sized DisplayPort. Club3D’s model uses two Mini DisplayPorts, HDMI and DVI. While Club3D’s layout gives you more versatility (because you can do more with two DisplayPort than you could with anything else) the lack of display adaptors is disappointing as you can’t run a more “conventional” (read: cheap) Eyefinity set up of DVI/DVI/HDMI. So DisplayPort adapters or an MST hub will be a must for anyone looking to run three or more screens.