Matrix R9 280X Unboxing

Here's what you get in the box of a new MATRIX R9 280X. It's pumped full of ROG goodies! It comes in a nice, big ROG-designed box! If you hadn't read this article, you can have a nose at the back to see what you're getting. Inside the box there's:

• a Diablo III mousepad 
• Speed Setup guide and driver disk (always get the very latest drivers from AMD.com though!)
• ROG case badge (hard, metal one!)
• CrossFireX bridge (the R9 280X will CrossFire with HD 7970 series cards too)
• DVI to HDMI adapter
• VGA Hotwire connectors to wire up to ROG 'Extreme' motherboards
• Replacement VRM heatsink for watercoolers and LN2 overclockers

Everything is split between two layers - the extra goodies on top and the card packed in mounds of foam below. Here's a close-up of that VRM heatsink. Underneath has sticky thermal pads. If you're just plugging straight into your motherboard using the DirectCU II cooler, you won't need it, so don't worry. The card is packed deep in foam to keep it happy during transport. Don't forget to take off the protective plastic from the back! Here's the MATRIX! That's still a backlit LED logo, which actively reacts to GPU load. It looks great through a case window. Four Display Ports and two DVI outputs. There's etching on the panel to detail which are DVI-I and DVI-D, and which DVI port can be converted to d-sub (VGA) if necessary. How the DirectCU II cooler looks from the side - you can see the copper pipes popping out from the core heatsink. Around it is a metal bracket to brace the PCB and collectively cool the GDDR5 and VRMs. Two 8-pin PCIe connectors power it: both are required. Below you can see the ROG additions: 100% fan speed button (in red), hardware voltage bumping and safe mode buttons to get it back to default, should you ever utter "Oops". Here's the Mod Zone. If you're super serious about heavy overclocking, short those bridges to unlock all the beans, but beware, such hardware mods void the warranty. On the left are voltage check points and the right connector is for the vCore VGA Hotwire. More VGA Hotwire connectors just over on the other side.