A number of reviewers of the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and subsequent early bird adopters have complained about a particular whining noise emitted from the card, which is equipped with a liquid cooling system. Here at HEXUS we might have been one of the lucky ones as it was very quiet overall in our system noise tests, in fact it was the best card for low noise during gaming.
User noise demo starts at 22 seconds
When AMD issued the first batch of Radeon R9 Fury X graphics cards to reviewers it stated that any noticeable whining noise issues are "limited to a very small batch of initial production samples and we have worked with the manufacturer to improve the acoustic profile of the pump. This problem has been resolved and a fix added to production parts and is not an issue." That quote was carried by a TechReport article yesterday which asserted that the "Retail Fury X coolers still whine".
Just one day later and it looks like the AMD's newest flagship graphics cards are starting to appear with an updated cooler design – sans whine issues. Earlier today a couple of sources pointed out that an Anandtech forum user received a replacement for his/her Sapphire boxed Fury X bought from Newegg. It uses a different pump design.
The new 'fixed' version of the LCS pump is said to be quite easily distinguishable from the older version, however you have to remove the front plate to peek at the cooling block to determine your version. The old version had a white and green CoolerMaster sticker, the new one is said to have a larger chrome CoolerMaster logo etched into its surface.
The new 'fixed' pump is said to look like the one on the right
There are quite a number of videos on YouTube of people trying to demonstrate the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X pump noise issues. There is now one that purports to demonstrate the new quieter pump in action too (by the same user as the video at the top of this page). Please let us know if you have been affected by this issue and what you have done about it.
