Card Layout and Photos

What sets the PowerColor PCS+ R9 270X apart from the other R9 270X’s on the market is the PCS+ cooling design. Without it you just have another reference card that could come from any manufacture. They went with a dual fan cooling design and really packed the two fans in, this is noticeable on the top and bottom where there just isn’t any more room to go larger. The fan shroud design is black with red stripes going across it giving it a bit of an Asus styling. This isn’t a bad thing though, the card looks great but is still subtle enough to look good in any build, even if you aren’t using red in that build. The two fans are really unique in design with five large blades on each with notches cut out of them that house five small blades. I’m really curious to see how they perform in both cooling and noise levels as this isn’t anything like what other cards use. The rest of the cooling design is similar to some cards though with multiple heatpipes pulling heat from the GPU out over the heatsink for the two fans to cool everything down.

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Like most video cards with upgrade coolers, the PCS+ cooling does vent into the case from the top bottom and end of the card. This is because the dual fan design pushes more air than it would be possible to push out the back of the case.

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For power connections, PowerColor didn’t do anything different from the reference design. You need one four pin power as well as a six pin power connection.

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Just like other R9 270X’s, this card has a single Crossfire bridge that allows you to run two in crossfire in the future if you are hoping to add more performance.

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I think one of if not the best feature on the PCS+ R9 270X is the all black backplate that covers the PCB of the card. Not only will this make the card stronger and prevent any sagging, but it will also prevent you from shorting anything out on the back of the card as well. The backplate has the R9 270X logo on it, but I would have preferred it to be facing the other way so it would be visible when the card is installed. Beyond that you have a sticker for PowerColor’s Turbo Timer. Those of you who are into cars might know what a Turbo Timer is. On cars, a turbo timer keeps your car running after you shut it off to idle the turbo down to a better temperature before shutting the car off. This lengthens the life of your turbo by keeping the lubricating oil from burning up after you shut your car off. PowerColor has taken that same idea and designed a product that attaches to the back of this and other cards to run the video card fans after you turn off your PC to cool the video card down.

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Down on the end, the PCS+ R9 270X has a standard layout of connections. You get two DVI connections along with a full sized HDMI and a full sized DisplayPort. This is what I see on just about every card right now and the reason for that is because when combined with a DVI to VGA adapter, this covers all of the possibilities.

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