A Closer Look

MSI's heatsink uses a vapor-chamber baseplate. You can also see the thermal pads that cool memory chips and voltage regulation circuitry.


MSI included a backplate with their card, which gives the card a rather stylish look and protects it against damage during handling. It also provides cooling for the four memory chips located on the back of the card.


The card requires one 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is good for up to 225 W of power draw.


The card uses an NCP5392 voltage controller, which is a simple and cost-effective design, but does not come with I2C, so software voltage control or monitoring is not possible.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Elpida and carry the model number W2032BBBG-60-F. 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.