The fan
The cooler is the reference Nvidia design which uses the blower style fan and heatsink. The main advantage is that air is pushed towards the exhaust vents but it does limit sheer cooling potential like the Twin Frozr II style coolers. The fan itself uses small curved fins as opposed to a blade design to achieve this. It also has PWM functionality for temperature based fan management.


The GF104 core and memory modules
Upon removing the heatsink, the GPU core and memory chips are left exposed. The integrated heat spreader on the die is rather large but helps create a larger surface area for heat dissipation. Looking closely, it's clear that the chip is indeed a GF104 core. The core is surrounded by eight 128MB memory modules to give a total of 1024MB. We saw that the MSI GTX465 had space for 10 modules in total with two removed for that particular SKU. The GTX460, on the other hand, sports a maximum of eight modules with 2 removed on the 768MB variant.


The Samsung K4G10325FE-HC05 memory modules
The memory modules are the same found on other Nvidia cards. These are manufactured by Samsung and sport the model number: K4G10325FE-HC05. The GDDR5 memory is rated at 0.50ns for an effective 4.0Gbps.


The VRM circuitry
Near the end of the card we can see the VRM circuitry. Judging by the number of chokes, the reference design doesn't look to hold the same robust solution as the MSI card. However, Zotac claim that their cards are manufactured with electrolyte capacitors with aluminium caps for long term reliability. Furthermore, they use SMT choke coils which reduce radiation for a more eco-friendly approach. The VRM circuitry is cooled directly by the fan above.


The direct contact heat pipes
The underneath of the shroud reveals the heatsink and heat pipes. The former uses three direct contact copper heat pipes for improved heat transfer between the core and the cooler. These heat pipes then run towards the heatsink to dissipate the heat. Rather than using an all aluminium and copper design, Zotac use a steel plate for support and the heatsink is screwed onto with spring loaded screws. The shape accommodates for the GF104 core on which it lies but the steel structure does not provide efficient cooling for the memory modules.


The aluminium heatsink
Looking closer at the heatsink, it can be seen that it uses 35 fins to maximise the surface area. Although not packed as densely as the Twin Frozr II cooler, we have to remember that this is a reference designed cooler to reduce costs. Nonetheless, it should be able to cope well with the presumably cooler running core.