A leaked image has appeared of what could be a prototype cooler for the upcoming AMD Radeon R9 390X, designed by Asetek. Just three weeks prior, Asetek boasted about a major design win with an "undisclosed OEM" relating to graphics liquid cooling, with this new image practically confirming that said OEM is AMD.
Asetek is the company who designed the hybrid liquid-air cooler for the dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2, so it makes perfect sense for their partnership with AMD to continue. The cooler they're developing for the R9 300 series card is similar in design to that for the R9 295X2, but with the fan moved towards the back to cool just one GPU. Along the top you can still see the liquid cooling loop connectors.
At this stage there's not much that can be gathered about AMD's upcoming flagship graphics cards, other than they're looking at drastically improving the reference cooler. The R9 290X was a hot, loud card when cooled by the weak stock cooler, so moving to a hybrid cooler will allow it to push the performance boundaries while keeping cool.
It's rumored that the Radeon R9 390X, the high-end card that'll likely use this cooler, will launch in early 2015 equipped with a Volcanic Islands-series 'Fiji' GPU. Specifications at this stage are unknown, as AMD is clearly still in the development phase for the card.
Meanwhile, as has been the case with the past few generations of graphics cards, Nvidia will launch their new line of Maxwell-based graphics cards first. It's expected that the GeForce GTX 900 series will launch as early as next week.