A Closer Look

MSI's cooler uses two large fans and five heatpipes to keep the card cool.


The front of the card (with the GPU) is covered by a secondary metal heatsink that cools the memory chips and voltage regulation circuitry.


The card requires two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is good for up to 375 W of power draw.


For voltage control, the card uses the same OnSemi NCP4206 voltage controller that we've seen on the NVIDIA reference design. It is a cost-effective solution without I2C, so advanced monitoring is not possible.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G20325FD-FC28. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GK104 graphics processor introduced the company's Kepler architecture. Manufactured at TSMC in Taiwan, it is NVIDIA's first chip to be produced on a 28 nm process. The transistor count is 3.54 billion.