With the excitement surrounding custom versions of AMD’s R9 290X, the amount of time between the initial release and availability of board partner designs came as a surprise to some. It’s taken well over two months but there’s good reason for that: much like gamers have been looking for lower temperatures and reduced acoustics, actually engineering a heatsink that’s capable of delivering on those expectations is easier said than done. This is why it has taken XFX and their competition so long to release their respective solutions.