I have been working on a parts list for awhile now and I think I have almost completed my research!
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been deciding on what GPU I wanted. With some help from the Tek Syndicate community, I decided on the Radeon r9 290
I would urge caution on the MSI twin frozer - only reason being is that recently I've been hearing more consistently that those cards have some issues with cooling, throttling and that they aren't very good OCers. Don't take my word for it, but do some research and see what the general consensus is.
Personally, I'm considering the club3d Royal Ace R9-290, which has been receiving really good reviews across the board and is apparently one of, if not, the fastest 290 variant in terms of stock and OCing.
Here's a link to the product page: http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/products/reader.en/product/radeon-r9-290-royalace.html
And here's a recent in-depth review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQYp6VU58Y
R9-290 in terms of Audio Levels and Temperatures the one i would recommend is any of the Sapphire cards. for some reason honestly a lot of vendors have issues with the coolers, where they still jump in the mid 80's in temps or still with in the high 80s. but Sapphires Tri-X cooler and Vapor-X has kept them incredibly the temps incredibly low.
I Recommend the Vapor-X card cause for the awesome Low Temps it keeps the card under and the cooler is really quiet as well.
Honestly the Vapor-X card. and the only reason I do recommend that card is because Sapphire honestly was the only Vendor who actually were able to keep the temps of the card down, Excluding MSI on the R9-290x Lightning that was ridiculous. Usually MSI or ASUS are the ones to REALLY keep the Radeon card Temps down but for some reason these Hawaii GPU's they actually couldn't do it, and Gigabyte they are capable of Getting the Temps down but you have to raise the Fan Profiles to about 70% and that's fairly loud to begin with. but from what i've been reading, and hearing the Vapor-X card is probably the best you can grab for the R9-290.
Go with the MSI. From the reviews I've seen the temps are from 75-85 degrees for temps and around the low 40s decibles at load, which is very quiet. Won't be completely silent, but with headphones, it'll be fine.
Plus the red/black color scheme will match your rig, which to me is worth the ever so slight performance differences between the higher end 3rd party coolers.
Reference will do me fine, considering i plan on using a kraken g 10 and a small aio. With fans of my choice, it will be quiet and cool. I would hate to have to rip off all those fancy coolers off the new cards but i will if i must. :")~
Makes me wonder... There are lots of cheap 290's on the local classifieds here but they are mostly reference cooled (jet-engine) cards. Knowing how loud they are, might be worth it to throw a low-cost AIO cooler on it but that might not fit in the Node 304...
Yeah, just had my Node 304 open this evening cleaning out the dust filters and it looks like I could fit the NZXT Kraken G10 GPU bracket with any of the compatible 140mm AIO coolers, but would come very close to interfering with the CPU cooler - which I'd also like to upgrade to something more efficient and quiet. Can only do so much in such a small case, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. Still love the small form factor, none-the-less. It's amazing what can be stuffed in these little boxes. :)
The MSI cards do this as well. They ramp up to 100% in reverse to pull any loose dust out of the heat-sink and expel it. Annoying; kinda, good for the overall longevity of the card; hell yes.