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Dismantling The Card
We dismantled the cooler to have a look under it, as well as to allow us to closely inspect the heatsink design and fan. It wasn't very difficult. In fact, there were only ten screws to remove and voilà! the cooler pops off!
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The card... in the nude! |
As you can see, the cooler is huge. The card itself is pretty plain, populated mainly by the GeForce 7900 GTX GPU and eight GDDR3 memory chips. The GPU itself is covered in thermal paste while the memory chips are covered with thermal tapes.
Here's a closer look at that GPU. Doesn't look like much, all smudged up in thermal paste, but that's the spanking new GeForce 7900 GTX right there.
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The other two pictures show what the GeForce 7900 GTX will look like from the top and bottom, without the thermal paste, of course. 
The Fan
The cooler is powered by a single large 80mm fan placed right in the center. With a power output of only 1.56W, this isn't a very powerful fan but it's large and should produce a significant amount of air flow. Cool air is sucked in from the center of the card and exhausted out the sides through two outlets.
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The fan |
Fan power connector on the card |
Here's a closer look at the two air outlets. The left outlet exhausts hot air out the vents on the back plate while the right outlet exhausts air into the case. The plastic shroud over the heatsink fins keeps the air flow directed from the center of the cooler to both outlets.
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Fan exhaust on the left |
Fan exhaust on the right |
While this design does have a "balanced" look to it, it would be preferable for all of the hot exhaust air to be vented out the back plate. This design lets half the hot air back into the case to recirculate. That can't be a very good idea with a chip with a power output of 120W.
