A Closer Look

The ASUS DirectCU cooler isn't really "DirectCU" in the sense we expected, since it uses a vapor-chamber baseplate, and the Direct CU naming has traditionally been reserved for coolers with milled down heatpipes for direct contact with the GPU (without the baseplate). ASUS argues that DirectCU could also mean "Direct" contact using a "Copper" surface. Either way, the cooler looks well designed and includes cooling for memory chips and VRM circuitry. Memory chips on the back side of the card are unfortunately not cooled.


The card requires a single 8-pin PCI-Express power cable for operation. This power configuration is good for up to 225 W of power draw. A highlight here is that a single 8-pin power connector is used instead of two 6-pin ones. This saves space and probably lowers cost—a good choice.


Unlike the NVIDIA reference design, ASUS uses a Richtek RT8867A voltage controller on their card. It is functionally very similar to the OnSemi NCP5395 on the reference design—neither offers I2C voltage control or advanced monitoring, but both are cost effective solutions.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by SK Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 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.