PowerColor ‘DEVIL’ R9 390X 8GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The PowerColor DEVIL R9 390X graphics card will be available for an MSRP of approximately $449.99, but geographical charges may increase or decrease the price. As soon as possible after launch, this article will be updated with links to retailers with stock.

Overview

So there we have it, the latest card from the depths of hell, or maybe the PowerColor manufacturing line depending how you look at things. It is one of the cards that makes you genuinely excited to be testing, it’s not very often that a DEVIL card gets released. Sadly when I opened the box, it didn’t give me the same feeling that the DEVIL 13 did; maybe I set the bar too high in my mind by expecting the same level of accessories that the DEVIL 13 provided.

As with all of the DEVIL range, this looks completely bonkers (ish). It doesn’t follow the true DEVIL styling of a huge 3 slot, 3 fan cooling design, but times have changed and the general consumer wants compact, cool and quiet; something that doesn’t easily go hand in hand. The design is striking and the slightly tilted fan proves a great addition to the design by forcing hot air out of the cards IO panel. It is relatively noisy due to two fans spinning constantly, but positioned in the right area; you could have them aiding each other whereas in a test bench there isn’t really anywhere practical to mount the radiator. Even though the tilted fan proves a great addition, due to the angle, it has turned the card from a compact two slot to a deceiving three slot width. That’s probably not enough to put you off, but if your ideal PCIe slots are the traditional two slot distance from each other; say goodbye to Crossfire. That being said, the water cooling solution keeps the card extremely cool for an R9 390X, we all know that this GPU core can produce a lot of heat; so for the temperatures to be under 60°c, that’s a great achievement.

What is there to say about performance? It performs roughly where we expect compared to our previous R9 390X testing. It beats the GTX 970 and is in a tumble with the GTX 980. This is a shame as the DEVIL branding is normally only associated with the top AMD card at the time, but AMD had shot all of their sub-vendors in the foot by limiting the potential customisation to the R9 Fury X. However, PowerColor used what was available and made a great R9 390X because of it. The 8GB of VRAM is a great thing to have, especially when you start adding mutliple cards together and use higher resolutions.

There isn’t anything really wrong with the card, personally I would look at changing the pipes; if you have a small ITX case such as the Corsair 250D, there won’t be much room for the pipes to bend comfortably. I would think that a rigid 90° bend that you can twist to your preferred direction would be a step in the right direction.

While this is a great graphics card in its own right, I really hope that PowerColor are able to get on board the dual GPU R9 Fury graphics card and AMD allow sub-vendors to customise it; that would be truly worthy of the DEVIL branding.

Pros

• Amazing cooling
• Unique styling
• 8GB VRAM will be helpful with Crossfire setups

Cons

• Water pipes require space to be bent without damage
• The 3 slots restrict possible Crossfire configurations on some motherboards

“The DEVIL has surfaced once again and is ready to decimate the all that oppose it! This is easily one of the best mid-to-high range cards on the market.“

Thank you to PowerColor for providing this review sample.