What about the Sapphire, any better? Are there differences with respect to cooling?
Yeah, Sapphire cards have terrible cooling. Not as bad as XFX of course, but still insufficient. I don't know why they're always recommended for mining.
my sapphire dual-x 280x (among the cheapest cards) stays quite silent and gives solid hash rate

I may try asus direct cu top next time
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Qol4_sjSK1s/UvzOaA5mabI/AAAAAAAAGmE/Z1FEBv28qzE/w1430-h868-no/vert2.jpgEDIT: dont panic, GPU 1 is the iGPU from AMD APU, I can't bear the mighty 10WU so it is disabled! For this reason, the ambient temp reading is also wrong, it is the hot hot aussie summer down under!