Before removing the cooler we noticed a couple of 'no-entry' stickers, presumably removing these will invalidate the 2 year warranty. The first of these stickers covers not a screw head as expected but a small resistor. As you can see, the OV Unlock beneath tells us that this resistor likely restricts what voltage can be applied to the card and those changing it (to allow higher voltage ranges) will also invalidate the warranty. No complaints there.


What we do object to is the increasing number of manufacturers restricting the removal of heatsinks. While this example has great contact and sufficient, quality TIM we have seen some examples of TIM application that left a lot to be desired. Even the best applied TIMs by manufacturers can often be bettered by applying an aftermarket brand such as our favourite - Arctic Cooling MX-4. Regardless of this fact, Gainward are not alone in restricting the removal of heatsinks for this or other purposes such as adding a GPU waterblock.


Throwing caution to the wind, we removed the cooler. The cooler is held in place with 12 screws. A further four spring loaded screws hold the core to the coolers copper baseplate.


The cooler comprises of a brushed copper basplate with aluminium surround out of which spring 5x 8mm nickel coated copper heatpipes that stretch along the finned array of the heatsink.


The last piece of cooling is the steel midplate which cools down the VRMs and memory sinks and transfers heat via thermal pads.