Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look

The Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-X OC graphics card uses three 85mm fans on top of a mammoth heatsink which boasts five heat pipes of which two are 6mm and three 10mm “superpipes”.

The card uses a matte black PCB and the cooling solution overshoots the PCB by about 1.5 inches.

Here we can see the overshoot area of the graphics card and what appear to be some voltage read off points but I could be mistaken and Sapphire do not specify on their website.

The bottom of the card is open to allow for exhaust of hot air away from the card.

Sapphire have built in a metal stability plate to add rigidity to the card, a nice touch given how long and heavy this card is.

The card measures in at a staggering 31 cm or 12.2 inches. It keeps to a dual slot design.

Power is drawn through dual 8 pin connectors.

There are two CrossFire X connectors for up to 4 way GPU scaling.

Sapphire provide a BIOS button which switches between UEFI and legacy BIOSes. This is mainly for compatibility purposes as both BIOSes use the same clock, fan and voltage profiles.

The rear I/O offers two DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort so there’s something for everyone.

Sapphire’s Vapor-X logo illuminates in blue while there is also an activity LED indicator on the back, those six green LEDs. More LEDs light up as the load increases, presumably each LED is 1/6th of the potential 100% load maximum.