[section_title title=”Closer Look (Cont.)”]
Closer Look Continued
No graphics card review is complete without a removal of its cooler so without any further messing around, let’s get to the good stuff and find out what is under the covers! So what lays beneath the cooler exactly? Well, a graphics core and some VRAM and probably some power circuitry too. Let’s take a look and find out, shall we?
By removing the four screws that that are in a squared position, you can remove the entire GPU cooler with minimal fuss. The thermal paste that is used did dry up on our sample which is not uncommon and in fact happens on 99% of GPUs as they use a cheaper TIM that you may expect to find. It’s a shame, but it does the job and that’s pretty much its purpose and nothing more. Other than that, you’ll notice that there isn’t actually a heat spreader that covers the entire card such as on the ASUS GTX 770 DirectCU II OC which I previously reviewed. The purpose of the full card heat spreaders aren’t just to keep temperatures down, they also help to keep the card rigid and sturdy as such large coolers do tend to weigh the card down and that causes it to sag at the back.
If we take a closer look at the cooler itself, you can clearly see the five heatpipes that are used to draw heat away from the core. Two of them are notably thicker and the reason behind that is to help to carry heat from the centre of the core away faster and more efficiently. However, I won’t blab too much as I’ve spoken about this a million times over in other reviews. Â The cooler may not be as big or as densely packed as some of the other cards that I’ve looked at previously but there’s always a fine line between what is needed and what becomes unnecessary as it won’t aid the overall cooling performance. In fact, if it is too dense, it may lower cooling performance as the rest of the card will become warmer from the lack of airflow to say the VRM and VRAM components. As mentioned previously, it was a bit of a shame that this card doesn’t come with a full heat spreader and rather in two separate blocks, but they will still help with overall rigidity and temperature reductions.
There are enough power phases to take care of some of the most demanding overclocks you may want to throw at it. Of course, the card is voltage locked (thanks NVIDIA!), but you will still be able to rest assured that the card is getting a clean and stable supply of juice when it is being pushed to its limits. There are five power phases for the graphics core and two for the memory which should be ample for 99% of users out there. This card certainly won’t break any world records, the power delivery isn’t strong enough for that and it wasn’t designed for that either. However, for the average Joe, it’ll do just fine.
This is usually the section where I’d show you the VRAM but there’s some unfortunate problem whereby it won’t be visible. The VRAM has extremely faint printings of what model/brand the chips are and to make matters worse, the writing is in black! Black VRAM chips with black writing – it makes for one very difficult image to take! I can however confirm that the VRAM is manufactured by Samsung and they should be pretty darn quick too. Let’s move on to the testing to find out whether this is indeed the case or if it will fall flat of the ASUS GTX 770 DirectCU II that I previously tested.
