A Closer Look

ASUS is using five heatpipes that are in direct contact with the GPU's surface for cooling purposes.


An additional, smaller heatsink cools the voltage regulation circuitry.


ASUS included a dual-BIOS feature on their card, which lets you pick between a BIOS optimized around a normal operation or liquid nitrogen use. The LN2 BIOS also serves as a backup should something go wrong during a BIOS flash. Unfortunately the BIOS switch only works after connecting the LN2 solder posts near the back of the card, so maybe temporarily bridging it with a screwdriver is a solution for that, if you just want to recover your BIOS.


Power delivery requires two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is specified for up to 375 W power draw. In the picture above, you can see a red plastic lip right below the power connectors. This complicates plugging the power cables in and out a bit, especially if you can't get a hold of these connectors straight on.


Near the back of the card is an old-school Molex power connector. It is used to supply power to the memory defroster, a special circuit that, once activated, generates heat where the memory chips sit to prevent those from getting too frosty to avoid possible "cold bugs" that usually hinder overclocking. This feature obviously only makes sense for overclocking attempts with liquid nitrogen. The heater is temperature controlled, which means it automatically adjusts its heat output to keep the memory chips at positive temperature.

Also visible in the photograph is a push button that can be used to reset the GPU overclock and its voltages, which can be saved to the card with ASUS GPUTweak. Pushed it too far? Card doesn't boot anymore? Press that button and every setting will default.


Also near the back of the card, but on the other side of the PCB are several measuring points for the GPU's voltages. Right next to these measurement points are spots you can solder a variable resistor to for voltage adjustments. You can also enable the memory heater and LN2 mode via a solder bridge here (so ASUS can prove you messed with the card when you claim the warranty).


ASUS re-branded their voltage controller, which makes figuring out its model hard. It does support voltage control and monitoring through ASUS's GPUTweak Utility.


The GDDR5 memory chips are by Samsung and carry the model number K4G41325FC-HC28. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GM204 graphics processor brings the Maxwell architecture to the high-end. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with a transistor count of 5.2 billion and a die size of 398 mm².