Club3D R9 280X royalKing 3GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

In the UK Club3D’s R9 280X royalKing graphics card is fetching £245. In Europe we could only find the lower clocked royalQueen version which costs €279.90. Club3D also recently started selling in the USA and on Newegg the item can be found for $299.99. In Canada consumers can also pick this item up for $329.99 CAD. All in all then we can see that Club3D’s royalKing R9 280X more or less sticks to reference AMD pricing of $300/£245 which is excellent considering that this comes with both a factory overclock and a custom cooler.

Overview 

With so many R9 280X graphics cards on the market it really is quite difficult to separate them all out. One thing does run common between them all that is they all have high power consumption, run relatively hot and as a result do not end up being the quietest of graphics cards. The same thing is true of Club3D’s royalKing but from our testing their cooler was one of the quietest, even if it didn’t run the coolest. Their cooling solution is clearly miles better than the reference solution but anyone looking for a whisper-quiet graphics card under intense gaming loads may still be let-down, not just with this R9 280X but with most of them because they all produce a lot of heat. Of course that’s not to say that you can’t improve on the noise by adjusting the fan profiles because you can, but this is just something worth noting for anyone looking into an R9 280X and hoping to get a deadly silent graphics card. We still think Club3D have done an excellent job to keep the card running cool and fairly quiet with a dual slot thickness and only 10.5 inches of length.

Moving on to other aspects of the graphics card and we think its performance was great. It traded blows with XFX’s similar overclocked R9 280X and wasn’t that much far behind the Sapphire Toxic R9 280X. Of course the major advantage this R9 280X has over both the XFX and Sapphire variants is that this sticks to MSRP R9 280X pricing and competitors are 10-15% higher. This puts the Club3D R9 280X in a position of incredible strength because it offers a competent custom cooler, aggressive factory overclock and a backplate for around 10% less than much of the competition. For the budget conscious buyer the Club 3D R9 280X certainly makes perfect sense. As we also mentioned it is a lot more compact both in width and length than most its rivals so it will fit in the vast majority of cases, even some smaller mini-ITX and micro-ATX cases that are becoming popular.

Our particular sample did have an issue with coil-whine, something we spoke to Club3D about. They told us that users experiencing coil-whine (whether that happens as soon as they purchase the graphics card or later on down the line) are entitled to RMA the graphics card because of coil-whine during the 3 year warranty they offer on this product. While it is never nice to experience noticeable coil-whine, a minor problem that does occasionally occur on the Tahiti XTL (HD 7970/ R9 280X) chip, it is great to know Club3D are willing to step up to the plate and sort the problem out for consumers.

Pros

• Excellent pricing, undercuts most rivals
• Strong out of the box overclock
• Relatively compact design for a R9 280X
• Comes with a back plate
• 3 Year warranty

Cons

• Quieter than most other R9 280Xs but still not a quiet graphics card
• Memory had below-average overclocking capacity
• Our sample had moderate coil-whine
• Lack of display adapters
• High power consumption
• Not currently part of any game bundle

“If you’re searching for an R9 280X and on a really strict budget then it doesn’t get much better than Club3D’s R9 280X royalKing for the price. They offer a competent custom cooler, high quality backplate and impressive factory overclock right out of the box. Like all R9 280X graphics cards the Club3D royalKing does have high power consumption and can get a bit noisy as a result, but Club3D’s cooling solution is the quietest of all R9 280Xs we have tested. If you want a great value for money AMD graphics card to tackle high resolution gaming, then this might just be it. “

Thank you to Club3D for providing this review sample.