PCB Analysis

Zotac has completely redesigned the VRM, which now uses 16 phases for the GPU and two phases for the memory.


The uP9511, which handles GPU voltage, is found on many other GTX 1080 Ti cards, including the NVIDIA Founders Edition. It supports eight power phases.


A closer look at the GPU VRM circuitry reveals that Zotac uses uP1961S clock-doublers to go from 8-phase to 16-phase, which cuts switching frequency in half, reducing efficiency slightly, but distributing the load over more phases. Each of the phases on this design uses three MOSFETs; two UBIQ QN3107 on the low side and a QN3103 on the high side.


The two-phase memory VRM is powered by a uP1666. This controller drives three UBIQ MOFSETs for each phase, just like on the GPU voltage, but without the clock doublers.


The GDDR5X memory chips are made by Micron and are marked with "D9VRL", which decodes to MT58K256M321JA-110. They are specified to run at 1375 MHz (11,000 MHz GDDR5X effective).


On the back of the card are two large super capacitors that store energy ready to be released quickly when voltages drop. This measurably helps smooth out voltage spikes, but is of no real benefit to the user. These capacitors don't improve efficiency, overclocking, temperatures or anything else; they look shiny, though.


Near the PCB's top edge, ZOTAC has placed several voltage monitoring and tweaking points for the hardcore voltmodders.


NVIDIA's GP102 graphics processor is the company's second-largest chip using the Pascal architecture. It is produced on a 16 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with a transistor count of 12 billion and a die size of 471 mm².