A Closer Look

MSI's cooler uses five heatpipes. To maximize heat transfer, two of these are also pretty fat.


Secondary components like memory and voltage regulation circuitry are cooled by two smaller heatsinks.


Power delivery requires one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is specified for up to 300 W power draw.


MSI is using an OnSemi NCP81174 voltage controller, the same as on the NVIDIA GTX 980 reference design. It is a cost-effective solution without support for I2C, which makes advanced monitoring impossible. Its VID-based voltages can be monitored and controlled through NVIDIA's driver.


The GDDR5 memory chips are by Samsung and carry the model number K4G41325FC-HC28. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's new GM204 graphics processor brings the Maxwell architecture to the high-end. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with a transistor count of 5.2 billion and a die size of 398 mm².