Seemingly great OC'ing PCS+ 290 throttling?

Ninja, It really is personal preference. How quiet you want the system or if your willing to invest more into the system. I do think that keeping any part cooler will always help with overclocking. In a lot of cases bumping up clocks means giving them more voltage which means more heat. Water cooling gives you more room to go higher on overclock and voltage and lets face it, your system parts are going to have longer life spans if they are not under constant stress from heat. Overall it is preference. They design these cards to run under some pretty intense heat and VRM's on 290 cards are rated for 125C but when it gets close to that it scares me. Plus it seems you can always find info on what cards are doing well and how many are being sold but you don't find a lot of info on how many are being RMA'd for repair/replacement. I myself have RMA's three 290x cards over the last 12 months. 1 was DOA and 2 had blackscreen issues. I ended up keeping 2 of them and getting money back for the other and crossfired them with water and am satisfied now.

yep its not all about performance per dollar.

its about Quietness.

for me thats 100% the justification of water.

before my pc for 2 generations sounded like a wind tunnel and people would actually complain about my fans on voice chat.

with my water setup with all fans at 1000-1300 rpm its a quiet wisp in the background in comparison.

and no one ever complains anymore and i can stand being around my gaming rig without my headphones on.

before it sounded almost like a vacuum.

the fans never change their tone now and its pleasant.

The cooling capability are just a bonus for me really obviously i expected them but it was a secondary reason for doing my water-loop.

Its nice once its done though you basically don't have to worry about heat on a device again. they stay cool winter-spring-summer-fall