Company: VisionTek Products LLC, East Dundee, IL
Company Description: Since 1995, VisionTek Products LLC (VisionTek) has been recognized as a leading developer of performance memory, graphics cards, power supplies, and Solid State Drives for Macintosh and PC computers. Its products can be found at leading retailers, distributors, PC system builders and e-commerce sites.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Hardware - Computer

Nomination Title: VisionTek's CryoVenom Liquid-Cooled Graphics Card

1. Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

The CryoVenom R9 290 was introduced at the 2014 CES show as the computer industry’s first and fastest custom-built liquid cooled AMD Radeon™ R9 290 graphics card on the market. The hand-built card delivers lower temperature, near silent operation, and higher performance compared to AMD's reference design for both the 290 and 290X cards.

Upon their introduction in the Fall of 2013, the Radeon R9 290 series of graphics cards were tested and considered by many expert sources as the best graphics cards available. However, many experts, including VisionTek technicians, discovered that when the R9 290 graphics card was 100% utilized in demanding use conditions such as extended game play – the card’s temperature could climb to 201°F. Even with very efficient fan cooling and the latest AMD Catalyst driver that provided a 100% fan speed operation, the card’s built-in thermal safety feature would downclock the GPU from the factory 947MHz speed to as low as 662MHz. Combined with this performance reduction of up to 30%, the increase in fan noise was measured at 71dB, a sound level considered louder than a normal conversation.

To make sure multimedia professionals and gaming enthusiasts would experience the maximum performance potential from the 290 GPU, VisionTek created the CryoVenom R9 290 graphics card. By utilizing a custom designed water block and backplate solution, the CryoVenom R9 290 runs up to 38% cooler (125°F) while being overclocked up to 24% (1.1GHz) all while registering under 10dB of noise, which is the sound level of a pin drop. To assure stable overclocked performance, VisionTek uses a special GPU stress utility to put a 100% load on each CryoVenom R9 290’s GPU for an extended time period to determine the optimum overclock setting. Those overclock specifications are entered onto a build sheet that is personally signed by the VisionTek’s “Custom Shop” team member that built and tested the CryoVenom card. Each card is then extensively pressure tested to ensure leak-free cooling reliability. To make overclocking nearly Plug and Play simple, the end-user just enters the specifications from the build sheet in AMD's Catalyst™ Control Center software screen and in less than a minute, the CryoVenom R9 290 can safely deliver up to 1175MHz GPU speed…a 24% increase from the stock setting of 947MHz. The memory clock speed is also increased up to 1450MHz… 16% faster than the 1250MHz stock setting. And unlike standard cards in which overclocking voids the warranty, the CryoVenom R9 290 comes backed by a one year warranty.

Upon its launch at CES, the CryoVenom R9 290 immediately sold out and several batch announcements in February were met with the same overwhelming sales response.

After finishing its independent testing of the CryoVenom R9 290 card, PC Magazine stated it was "...the quietest, coolest, and fastest AMD GPU we've ever tested."

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2. Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

The CryoVenom R9 290 was the brainchild of Michael Innes, President, a long-time graphics card industry veteran. Members of the VisionTek Product Development team that created the value proposition, messaging, and brand image for the CryoVenom R9 290 were Owen Escanilla, Custom Shop team lead; Grant Dahlke, Brand Manager; and Rachel Jordan Hayes, Creative Marketing Manager.