Disassembly

We will start by removing the cooling plates on the back of the PCB. Just remove all screws that hold those two plates down.





In the next step we remove the front cooler plastic cover. It is fixed to the cooler base plate using a clip on mechanism.


This is one of the tabs that hold the cover in place. These tabs are located all around the base plate and can simply be removed by pushing them in slightly inward. However, be careful that you do not push them too far, otherwise they will take a bend (2nd picture), or even break off. Once you got the first one removed it will help if you push the cooler cover inward a bit with your finger or screwdriver. Compared to the plastic tabs on the dual-PCB GTX 295 these feel quite improved, they do not tend to break as easily. However, they still feel flimsy, a screw based design would have been much more durable in my opinion.


The top cooler cover is really just a cover and serves to guide the airflow from inside the case, over the cooling modules, to the outside of the card.


Card after removal of the cover. You can clearly see the two large heatsink modules and the fan in the middle.


The way the heatsink modules are mounted to the card reminds me more of a CPU cooler mounting than a GPU mounting. This looks to be very well engineered and feel extremely durable.


The factory workers were quite generous with the thermal paste. One suggestion, when you re-assemble the card, put the thermal paste on the GPUs before putting the black heatsink base on the card.


The heatsink modules are a nice little cooler on their own. They come with a copper base and two heatpipes to transport the heat away from the GPU surface to a number of aluminum fins which sit directly in the airflow of the cooler.


The black metal base cools a large number of components on the PCB like the memory, voltage regulation, NVIO chips and NForce 200 PCI-E bridge.