Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X Tri-X OC Overview
The thing that distinguishes this card from other Sapphire R9 280X cards and lets you know that it is part of the Vapor-X series is the black and blue color scheme. I really like that Sapphire has gone with these colors, the blue is very vibrant and eye-catching. One of the thing that is new about this graphics card is the Tri-X cooling solution, which is made up of three 80 mm fans all which have the Vapor-X logo on them.
Under these fans and the black and blue shroud is the vapor chamber and two dense heatsink stacks that feature copper heatpipes. If we take a look at the card from each side we the cold plate that sits on top of the PCB. The opposite side of the card is where you will have your power connections which are dual 8pin connectors. There is a small button that will allow you to switch between the legacy BIOS and the UEFI BIOS. You can spot a large Vapor-X logo on the side of the card too, it will light up blue when the card is powered on.
As far connections go on the back of the card you have dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. There is also a little bit of ventilation on the back of the card.
Flipping the card over we can see that Sapphire has gone with a black PCB, which looks great. One thing that is missing on this Vapor-X card that was on the previous version is a black plate. From this view was can also see that the cooler and shroud actually extend beyond the PCB of the card. You are going to want to make sure this card will fit inside your case!
Taking the cooler off of the card itself we can get a better look at things. First if we take a closer look at the PCB we can see the Tahiti GPU. Surrounding the Tahiti GPU are your memory chips. These are Hynix memory chips which are said to be 15-20% more efficient than ELPIDA chips found on most R9 280X’s. This is definitely a good thing if you plan to use this card for crypto-currency mining. The card also features Black Diamond chokes and full Solid Cap’s which should help the card be more efficient and stable.
The heatsink design is quite similar to the one that we saw on the R9 280X Toxic. The heat plate however has been extended a bit more and the heatpipes are actually smaller. All in all it is a great cooler design though.
