Inno3D GeForce GTX 760 iChill Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone  Comments 📅14-07-13

Closer Look

The card has 6 8x Allen screws which enable the user to remove the fan shroud to gain access to the heatsink for cleaning. This will not void the warranty. While basic in its design and certainly not as efficient as some other designs we have seen, it is still good to see manufacturer thinking about long term use of the end user.

Removing the heatsink will void the warranty and there is little to get around this I'm afraid as a perforated seal breaks once the heatsink is removed. the heatsink is a perpendicular design meaning hot air will be vented back into the PC enclosure so good case air cooling will be required for optimal GPU cooling efficiency.

The heastink has a brushed effect baseplate which sandwiches 5 nickel coated heatpipes the stretch across the twin aluminium finned heatsink arrays. The GPU mounts are metal but encased with thick rubber grommets.

The heatsink is attached to the PCB by just four spring loaded screws which given the weight of the heatsink was a little concerning however upon removal of the heatsink our fears were unfounded as there is a midplate which adds a lot of lateral strength to the graphics card to prevent bowing under its own weight.

After removing the midplate we find each of the on-board components are cooled via direct contact to the midplate with thermal pads save for the GPU core which has direct contact (good) to the heatsink baseplate. the PCB design is typical of a high end card with the VRM closest to the power ports leaving the GPU to be framed by 8x 256MB memory ICs.

The VRM is a 5+2 design. The main 5 GPU inductors are married to 3 MOSFETs each with the smaller memory inductors having just two MOSFETS. Making up the VRM are a multitude of solid state capacitors.

The memory hails from HYNIX with a product code of H5GQ2H24AFR R0C which is the same memory used on the reference design. Not that this is a bad thing as we know it overclocks extremely well.