the Corsair carbide air 540 High airflow Cube case is great for air cooling or
liquid cooling check the link in the video description to learn more welcome
to my unboxing and overview of the GeForce gtx780 direct cu2 OC from ASUS
so let's go ahead and see what they have to say for themselves on the front of the Box anyway 20% cooler vastly quieter
and this we believe because like the last ASUS card overview we did we have
already taken it out of the box and we've already run it through the paces so yes we believe it OC Edition okay
it's not overclocked much but the advantage isn't necessarily in the
factory overclock but rather in the fact that because of the design of this
particular card it runs more efficiently
and runs cooler which allows GPU Boost 2.0 which remember reacts not only to
power thresholds as well as uh clock
speed but also to temperature so allows GPU boost 2 to dynamically increase the
clock speed of this graphics card it's using a fully custom PCB so that
includes their Digi plus power so that's their vrm design as well as their sap
components so super alloy power components this gives effectively better
overclocking when you use their GPU tweak software which works with any ASUS
graphics card particularly this one because we found it works very very well
so one of the things that ASUS has done with with this card is they have moved
away from something that's been a bit of a staple for
them whoa that was fun um and that is
the triple slot design of their very
high-end cards this is a dual slot card but hold on I'm getting ahead of myself
it comes with an SLI Bridge it comes with a dual six pin to8 pin adapter and
it comes with their GPU tweak and Driver which you should ignore and download the
latest off NVIDIA.com and ASUS's own website as as well as a quick start
guide so let's look at the card physically now it'll be obvious to
anyone who's seen a reference 780 that this isn't one but let's go through a
few of the things that make it non- reference number one it has a back plate
so this back plate doesn't contribute much to cooling let's be honest with
ourselves but what it does do is it looks cool and other than that it
prevents sagging so it actually makes the card more rigid and less likely to
floop down like we've seen with heavy graphics cards in the past now I me
mentioned already the dual fan configuration and dual slot
configuration but there are some other special things about it so number one is
check this out this is their new cooltech fan design so instead of just
being focused on blowing air down into the heat sink fins you can see as Seuss
has built up the cooler around the outside edges of the fan so you can see
there are aluminum fins here and and this fan is designed to not only blow
down but also out so that means you're able to take to make better use of the
heat sink fins that are all around the fan now the secondary cooling fan the
one that doesn't sit directly over top of the GPU uses their more traditional
style now the cooler itself in order to even have get any benefit from more air
flow okay any cooler can get benefit from more air flow whatever I'm trying to segue here all right so the cooler
itself has another unique feature check this out that right there my friends is
a 10 mm heat pipe this is the largest I
have ever seen on a graphics card uh MSI's old superpipe marketing that I
don't really see them using Much Anymore referred to 8 mm heat pipes of which
this card has two so there are two 8 mm heat pipes one 10 mm heat pipe and then
it looks like two 6 mm heat pipes so there are five total heat pipes carrying
heat away from the GPU core to the
massive cooler on the rest of this C now speaking of massive coolers there is a
very very very small P PCB extension
right here but but it doesn't add a significant amount of overall length to
the card not like we see with cards like the GTX 7 or the GTX 670 where it has
like a massive plastic overhang that isn't actually part of the components
there are LED indicators for the PCI Express slot so you can actually
diagnose if there's any kind of a power delivery issue with the board itself and
it has full support for VGA Hotwire so this right here is a PCI Express 3.0
interface nothing to do with VGA Hotwire except that if if you put that interface
into a supported ASUS motherboard generally speaking it's their Rog boards
you can actually overvolt the GPU and various components on the video card in
ways that NVIDIA never really intended ASUS doesn't advertise this feature on
their boxes because NVIDIA doesn't like it but there you go the feature is there
I have confirmed it it is supported now speaking of supported features it's got
support for 3D Vision surround with two HDMI outputs and
uh two two HDMI two DVI outputs an HDMI
output and a DisplayPort output you're going to get a little bit of exhaust out
the back of the case but generally speaking this is an internal exhaust
card so you're going to want to make sure you have good case air flow it has two SLI connectors with full support for
NVIDIA SLI up to three or even four-way
however four-way just really isn't that recommended these days at the back of
the card you've got two PCI Express connectors one of them is a six pin and
one of them is an eight pin and then other than that that's it for
connectivity what more did you guys really want were you expecting it to have like you know an anchor Port so
that you could actually use it as an anchor because it's quite heavy and
there's a good reason for that because in terms of the actual overall heat sink
Mass available for dissipating Heat this thing has about double what a stock GTX
780 does now we were a little bit worried about the complexity of removing
the graphics card cooler from this card but part of what auss I mean just
looking at all these little screws that it seems like we can't access but part part of what isus takes pride in with
their direct CU cards is this easy
disassembly four screws on the back of the GPU right there and that reveals the
direct contact copper heat pipe so you can actually see the nickel plating
isn't even on this part direct copper to GPU you can see that 10 mm heat pipe
those two 8 mm heat pipes as well as those two 6m heat pipes all branching
out to various parts of the cooler itself here all right so you can see why
that primary fan is considered the primary fan as well because most of
where ASUS is carrying the heat so that 10 mil pipe is right here under the
primary fan this 8 and this 6 mil are sitting right under the primary fan as
well as any heat that is carried through conduction directly by this block of
copper and aluminum here will sit directly under that fan as well so the
secondary one is only really getting some of the 10 ms heat as well as 16 and
18 both of which are carrying heat quite far away from the GPU which does reduce
their effectiveness now that we've got the cooler off we can also see part of
what makes this card tick now this is an overclocked card a referenced GTX 780
only gets uh a clock speed of around 863
900 for Boost and this one's at$ 889 941 however there's more to it than that
because of so here's a vrm heat SN as well as their super alloy power
components but the advantage that this card gets is because it's more efficient
and stays within its power Lim limits more effectively it actually is able to
achieve around 1,32 MHz typical boost
clock on average from what Aus has seen without any overclocking that means even
at stock speeds this card should be faster than what they're really saying
about it on the box which is very very
cool let's go ahead and show you the rest of the components that are on the
PCB itself first of all Matt PCB so ASUS
two thumbs up good job guys you guys rock 3 gigs of 6 G
um six G six three gigs not six gigs I was I had Titan on the brain there 3
gigs of 6 gz gddr5 memory so that's
pretty much the same as any other GTX 780 however it is also getting the
benefit of their digital power delivery in much the same way that the GPU itself
does so I think that pretty much wraps it up except what does all this mean in
the real world I just gave you a whole bunch of ASUS marketing speak but does
this card actually overclock better than a reference card boom here's a couple
graphs so in our experience yes we were
actually able to overclock the direct cu2 card better than we were able to
overclock our reference card your mileage may vary it's possible we got a
fantastic direct cu2 although ASUS tells us ours is pretty average it's possible
that we got a bunk GTX 780 reference card however when NVIDIA seeds those
cards to reviewers I don't think they pick all the bunk ones to send to
reviewers so take it with the grain of salt but that's what we think think
about it leave us a comment under the video what do here's what I want to know
what do you think ASUS could have improved about the GTX 780 direct cu2
for me they've addressed the triple slot issue which was a problem for me they've
I mean yeah okay what what could be improved also like the video guys share
the video and as always don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips
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