The main cooler was relatively easy to remove providing you have a Torx screwdriver. Rather than using the normal Philips head screws, NVIDIA have made things a little more tricky by using Torx head which are more robust and less easier to strip than Philips but many I fear will not have a Torx screwdriver. The main core unit and I/O area has the familiar Philips head screws which when removed allowed the cooler to come away from the PCB with relative ease.



Taking an in-depth look at the cooler we see that it is made up of three parts, the plastic shroud, aluminium midplate and aluminium and copper heatsink array. The shroud retains the centrifugal fan of previous designs which sucks air in directly and the forces this cool air through the aluminium finned heatsink to be exhausted at the I/O area of the card.



The heatsink is made up of aluminium fins soldered to an thick staggered aluminium plate. Attached to this is a machined block of copper which will make direct contact to the core. Our sample had perfect contact to the core and thus the Thermal interface material would not need to be replaced.



As with most modern day GPU's, the layout of the GTX680 is familiar in that the main core is framed by the (8x256MB) memory modules. Adjacent to this is the VRM module which is very different from what we are used to.



The card operates on a 4+2 phase design. Note that there is also a redundant phase for the core which could hint at a more powerful reference card being imminent? Also worthy of note is the optional 6pin PCIe power port for additional 12v power which again could be used for future applications or perhaps it is just a throwback of an older PCB design.

Between the memory and GPU VRM is the memory controller PWM with Power sense IC's adjacent to and above the rows of solid capacitors. These little beasties are the power limiters for the card. So where is the GPU PWM?



Strangely, NVIDIA have soldered this unit to the rear of the card rather than hiding it beneath the GPU cooler. This 5-phase controller hails from Richtek with a product number of RT8802A and controls the VID of the GPU.



Thankfully the GTX680 has included HYNIX memory into its armoury. With a product code of H5GQ2H24MFA R0C we know that this memory is capable of some fantastic results rated at 1.6v to run at 6Gbps so hopefully there will be some overclocking to be had there.



Finally we reach the GK104 core. We have already waxed lyrical about the technological advances made so we won't be going into detail here again. I will however say that NVIDIA are no longer implementing the integrated heatspreader seen with previous generation, instead opting for the exposed core allowing the heatsink to make direct contact with the core to aid heat dissipation.