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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the ASUS Aries 2 you can see I have an

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entire Master carton of Aries 2os which is five cards hence the size of this

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enormous box on the table in front of me

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actually I lied we do not have a master carton of Aries 2s every Aries 2 comes

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in a box this big so we're going to strip off the outer Carton and we will

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be back in just a moment now I was expecting some random

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foam around a box but no the Aries 2 is

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actually the entire size of the inside

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of this outer packing cart in fact I guess it's possible that ASUS doesn't

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even intend for retailers to put this

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this shipping box on the Shelf it's probably more intended to be displayed

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like this and that's just to protect the box from scuffs in transit so let's go

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ahead and have a look at what ASUS has to say for themselves really briefly the

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ASUS 2 features a custom cooler with liquid dissipation and air cooling so

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we'll show you this once we open it up 133% faster than gtx690 130% faster than

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hd7970 and we'll explain why that would be and one card six displays with 6 gab

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of gddr5 and a three-year limited warranty on this guy all right let's go

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ahead and uh yeah supports AMD Crossfire

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so yes you could actually install two of them for a quad GPU setup if you wanted

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so that would be 12 gigs of GPU memory in your system all right General specs

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so they are both 7970 GHz Edition gpus

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it is a dual GPU card they are clocked at 1050 MHz base so that's over 1 GHz

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base and they boost at 1.1 GHz memory clock is

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6,600 MHz memory interface is 768 bit

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okay okay you don't actually get to do that the memory interface is going to be

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half of that so they're doubling it because there's two gpus but maximum

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digital resolution 256 okay none of this is relevant anymore let's go ahead and

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open this bad boy up ASUS doesn't actually seal the box so I guess that

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there's probably a reason for that so let's go ahead and okay yet another box

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inside so give us a moment this is like one of those Russian

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dolls with the uh the Box inside the box

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inside see look you can stack them all like this and then we're going to find

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something even crazier and even more impressive inside this guy so this looks

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like a very high-end sort of you know

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casing for what might be like a really cool you know gun inside I mean it's

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kind of a weapon you know weapon for gaming or whatever else you want to do

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it's uh here's your hinges on the back it's got feet on the bottom so you could

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transport the cart around outside of your system if you really wanted to it

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does lock so that the very least this case will be reusable for you once you

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are finished installing the Aries 2 in your system feels like a collector's

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item and is packaged like a collector's

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item I cannot I cannot overstate how

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expensive every last detail of this card is down to things like this packing foam

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getting a custom foam like this this is hand assembled I hope you guys realize

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that I know I harp on packaging a lot but look at this these pieces are

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actually glued together by by hand and cut to the exact shape to match the

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Aries 2 graphics card that is how this happens it's not magic there's no

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machine that produces these that is the only way to produce custom foam like

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this okay so inside you find an additional fan for the radiator so we're

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going to talk more about the hybrid cooling solution soon you find mounting

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screws for the radiator okay so those bolt through the

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fan through your case and into the rad

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we find ah the numbered card telling you

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exactly which areas you get this document certifi certifies that the

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limited edition is a unique R art designed by the aluminum plate is individually laser carved and

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sequentially numbered to certify the limited edition status making it a

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collector's item and then the card itself you know

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what yeah here we go so this probably

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looks pretty familiar guys here I'm just GNA flip this bad boy up a little bit Ah

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good the back is protected okay there we go so put it down there so this probably

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looks familiar this looks an awful lot like an acch lclc with a thick 120 mm

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radiator so as long as your case has support for a single 120 mil rad you can

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install the Aries too assuming you don't already have a radiator mounted to that

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point it comes with a push pull fan design so uh it is looks like it is set

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up by default to be installed in your case this way so as an exhaust so you

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would hook up that additional fan here and plug both fans into the card

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directly where it can actually be controlled using ASUS's GPU tweak

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software see right there there's a harness that has one of the fans plugged

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in already and the other fan is ready to be plugged in and that gives you control

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over overclocking fan profiles uh as

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well as any other Diagnostics you need to have about the card such as the

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temperatures which I can tell you right now will be surprisingly low for a dual

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GPU card okay uh inside we also find

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sort of you know whatever who cares uh drivers and all that that you should

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download the latest of also all the accessories that you'd expect including

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a crossfire Bridge DVI to HDMI

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adapter um and as seus Rog case badge

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very very cool uh silica gel do not eat

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uh three uh dual six pin PCIe to 8 Pin PCIe

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adapters and we'll show you why you need that in just a moment here and finally

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the card itself the Aries Tu so the

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these liquid cooling tubes these quarter inch tubes actually cool the gpus so

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there are two here we go two gpus on the

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card one of them is here the other one is here those are both 79 full 7970 GHz

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editions unlike regular dual GPU cards

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they are are not downclocked or undervolted in any way they're just

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bined for Extreme Performance and lower power consumption and they are used on

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this PCB it has a unique 20 phase power

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design which brings me to why there is still an 80 mm cooling fan on the card

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itself because the water see you can't actually see into the cooler very well

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but the water cools the gpus and this is responsible just for cooling the vrm

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assembly as well as the memory itself so

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it is you can actually kind of see it there so it's vented throughout the card

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so that it is going to be pushing air down the channels where it's actually

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needed see so pushing air out here down to the PCB of your motherboard out over

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here where it can go through wherever it needs to go at least I think y yep so

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out this way over here cooling everything that it needs to on the

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actual PCB so it requires three 8 Pin

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power connectors with which is actually not unprecedented we've seen cards that

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do this before so if you wanted to install two Aries 2 cards you would need

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to make sure that you have two 120 mm

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mounting points in range of your GPU Slots of your PCI Express slots You'

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need to make sure you have six PCI express8 pin connectors this is a PCIe

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3.0 16x card as you'd probably expect um

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in order to get the bandwidth it needs out of the slot up here you find one

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crossfire finger so that gives you the ability to install up to two of these in

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a system because you can have up to four GPU Crossfire so there's two gpus here

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and then there'd be two on the other one so hence the one crossfire Bridge the uh

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yes here we go I don't want to like I don't want to put fingerprints on it or

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anything so I'm going to be careful with it you know we'll be back in a

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moment so other things about this card that make it cost an absolute Fortune to

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make the tooling and the design the machine work that goes into building a

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like massive cooler like this I mean this this plate of aluminum at the time

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of starting to cut into it with the machine had to be about this thick in

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order to get the design that ASUS was going for you see the angles that

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everything is cut at like you see how that that Mark goes in at an angle and

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then on the other side there's straight cuts and then cuts that go in at an

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angle as well that is just absolutely Precision

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manufactured and when you're only building a thousand of these cards it's

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not like you're going to make the uh it's not like you're going to make the money back in the volume that you're

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selling or anything like that so the custom PCB the design that actually goes

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into building something like this I mean as our AMD tried to build a

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7970 X2 you know dual dual GPU card and

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wasn't able to pull it off so you know

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like it's and that would have been to sell a lot more than a th units so ASUS

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put all that work into it just to sell a thousand plus again the custom PCB the

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custom cooler the custom sort of everything that goes into it I didn't

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want to take the cover off the back plate because it is brushed aluminum so

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what I'd really recommend that folks who buy these do is install it in your

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system then take the protective cover off because as soon as you touch that

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aluminum it's going to leave fingerprints on it and it could potentially stain it and Slick saying

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something gloves yeah or use gloves to install it making sure of course that

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they're like not staticky gloves or anything like that so yeah remove before

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use uh oh the sheer the sheer size of this card let's go retrieve something

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else ah yes here's a 7970 so it's hard

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to tell without another card for so this is already a big graphics card there it

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is for comparison with an aries 2 so the Aries 2 is a full inch taller a full

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inch longer than a single 7970 but the most impressive thing about

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it perhaps is the fact that it is still only a dual slot card so you don't need

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three slots this is the first Mars or Aries card that hasn't required three

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empty slots for case compatibility all

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right we're going to wrap up with one more thing and that is the io at the

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back so ASUS says native six outputs and they mean it because you don't need any

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air exhaust in order to cool the card because it's mostly liquid cooled ASUS

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can have a full IO shield with four DisplayPort outs and two dual link DVI

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outputs thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Aries 2

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from ASUS don't forget to subscribe to lineus Tech tips for more unboxings

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