[section_title title=”Packaging”]
Graphics cards that come in a box which is barely big enough to house the card itself has become a thing of the past. The box which the HIS IceQ X2 HD7950 comes in is monstrous in size. In fact, standing next to a motherboard box, it is about an inch taller than the motherboard is box is wide. However, it’s not all wasted packaging, and you will see why when it gets opened.
Starting with the front and moving our way around the box, we have the obvious HIS logo in the top left corner and the IceQ X2 model name in the middle of the box. This name denotes which cooler is on the GPU. At the bottom of the box, there’s a couple of its core features such as it being PCIE 3.0, sporting 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM, capable of 4K resolutions as well as having HDMI.
There is also information packed on the side of the box which states the sort of requirements for your system. It lists things such as the power supply requirements and the minimum amount of system memory that is required as well as things such as the system requiring a DVD ROM to install drivers and so on.
Flipping over the box reveals a host of information regarding the cooler and the features of the graphics card. I’ll start at the top and then work my way down so that it’s easy to follow. As this box is quite large, I’ve taken some closer shots so that it is actually visible rather than being too small to read. Starting off with the top four boxes talk about the cooler; the big one in the middle states about its power phases in which it states that there are six Dynamic Phase Control PWM IC phases on-board which should deliver extra power, stability and overclocking capabilities. The final two boxes mention the Full State Capacitors and the Solid State Chokes which according to HIS have the highest quality and durability to aid the lifetime of the card.
On the bottom half of the box, there’s a list of the features which this card brings to the table as well as the functions that it supports. Certain features include things such as its HDMI output, two Mini DisplayPorts, PCI-E 3.0, 7.1 audio as well as a few other things such as Shader Model (SM) 5, OpenGL 4.2 and DVI.
Moving on, it’s time to actually open the feature-laden outer box and see what is inside. There’s a black box with some HIS branding printed on to it with three main and arguably key selling points which are “faster”, “cooler”, and “quieter”.
Opening the black box then reveals the card in all its glory. Well, there’s a piece of foam about 1cm thick but I figured that it is something you wouldn’t really want to see a photo of as it is rather boring, so I removed it to present the graphics card instead. Just by looking at the sheer amount of foam surrounding the graphics card, you can be assured that it will not have taken any form of physical damage during its journey to your door.
After removing the card and the foam in which it sits, we are down to the final layer of this box which houses the very few accessories that come with this card. The reason I say this is because most graphics card manufacturers usually shove a load of stuff in there which you do not want to see such as a 2x Molex to 1x 6pin PCIE connectors. It looks like HIS have made it clear that if you do not have the power supply to run the card, you shouldn’t attempt to (with the adapters) either. I respect this and I wish more manufacturers would follow suit. The accessories comprise of the following items:
[…] will be taking a look at today features their IceQ X2 cooler and if we go back to my review of the HIS 7950 IceQ X², you’ll notice that the cooler is more or less identical to that. In fact, it is the same cooler […]