A Closer Look

ASUS's thermal solution uses five heatpipes; only two of these directly touch the GPU's surface. You can also see a yellow thermal pad that cools the voltage regulation circuitry. This is the exact same heatsink as on the ASUS GTX 1080 STRIX Gaming and RX 480 STRIX.


Once the main cooler is removed, a shiny metal bar becomes visible; it provides cooling for the memory chips.


The backplate is made out of metal, and unlike the ASUS RX 480 STRIX, the ASUS logo on the back is not RGB illuminated.


Near the back of the card are two fan connectors that are in sync with the GPU's fans. You could hook up two case fans that will stop completely outside of games. The main source of heat nowadays being the graphics card, attached case fans will run at the same speed as the GPU's fans that base their speed on how hot the card runs, which is a great idea!


ASUS has also included OC measure and tweaking points, which are unlabeled, but accessible without taking apart the card.


ASUS replaced the single 6-pin power input of the reference design with an 8-pin power connector. This configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.


The uP 9511 voltage controller is a new model for recent NVIDIA cards. It does not support voltage control via I2C.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G80325FB-HC25. They are specified to run at 2000 MHz (8000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GP106 graphics processor is the second consumer chip using the Pascal architecture. It is produced on a 16 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, and has a transistor count of 4.4 billion and a die size of 200 mm².