MSI GeForce GTX 560 Twin Frozr II Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,380 words · ~6 min read
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so today we'll be doing a quick unboxing of the MSI GTX
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560 that's it no ti so this is a 560 non
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TI It features their twin frozer 2 cooler it is an OC Edition card so it
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has the uh well it has some justification for the twin frozer cooler
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cuz they have turned up the clock speeds it features their military Class 2
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concept which means using higher quality components in order to increase
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longevity increase overclocking all that good stuff it's only 30 DB Under full
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load uh MSI says and I believe that the twin frozer 2 is an excellent cooler I
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just think it's awesome all right we've got a threeyear warranty in the US and
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Canada and Mexico don't know where else
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uh the warranties apply or don't apply okay it is 3D Vision ready features fizx
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Cuda NVIDIA SLI up to two-way SLI on
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this particular GPU and it has full support for MSI After Burner you also
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get a copy of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light this is a steam copy
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so it's quite easy to activate all right
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opening this up you can see a little bit more information about exactly the stuff
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that I just said and I'm pretty familiar with the twin frozer 2 cooler so I think
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I can go in blind on that one without uh
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seeing what MSI has to say for themselves so the gtx560 non-ti so this
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is just a slightly cut down uh card with
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a same basic GPU so the performance is close but not quite what you're going to
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get out of a GTX 560 TI full-fledged
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card but it's cheaper so there you go
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features uh not features comes with a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter a DVI to VGA
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adapter a quick user guide some useless
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disc there's your lar coft game as well
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as your driver update guide all right so
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go ahead and put this back in and then
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put this back in and let's have a look at the product itself here oh no no more
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accessories so dual Molex two single six pin PCIe connectors two of them and
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finally the card
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itself comes in an anti-static
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bag twin frozer 2 cooler hasn't changed
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much you know what give me two seconds I'm going to grab a 560
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TI yeah I forgot my 560 uh twin frozer 2
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560 TI twin frozer 2 I got to be careful with that from now on my 560 TI twin
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frozer 2 is part of the prize system I'm giving away so it's upstairs I'm not
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going to go get it but this is a GTX 460 Hawk and it uses the same PCB as the 560
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TI twin frozer 2 so you can see that it also uses the same PCB you can see the
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hawk is actually covered up right here as the GTX 560 twin frozer 2 so there's
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no real changes in terms of the physical layout of this board but I'm going to
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walk you through it anyway we've got a couple of 92 mm low profile fans so this
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allows MSI to maintain a two slot profile while putting in a dual fan
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custom cooled cooler solution all right we've
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got two super pipes so here's your two regular heat pipes in the middle of the
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GPU and the two super pipes are going out further away from the GPU because
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they do need to carry heat a little bit more efficiently because they are going
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over a greater distance you've got your standard PCIe 16x interface down
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here as well as what the heck is this this looks like uh it's got a couple of
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purposes okay so oh that's something new all right so you can see on the GTX 460
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here there's uh nothing here and on the GTX 560 twin frozer too
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there is a heat sink here so that would be for the uh the voltage Regulators so
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I guess MSI has just uh beefed up the design a little bit here and it looks
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like it's also going to provide some additional yeah here if you look at it from this side you can see it actually
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wraps around the end of the PCB and it that should provide some stiffness to
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the card as well and that won't be the only thing that provides stiffness to
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the card so you can see up here they're using their uh PCB stiffener actually
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they have a name for this that I've just
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forgotten and it looks like they haven't included it on the on the box either
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which makes my life more difficult but um basically what it is is it's a piece
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of metal that allows the card to be more rigid overall so you can't you can't
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really Flex the PCB you know what why don't we compare it against the 460 so
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here you can see how much Flex there is in it right okay so let's compare that
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to the 460 I'll hold that the same way and I'm just going to pinch it the same
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way so you can see how that PCB can Flex quite a bit more now especially if
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you're moving your system around or shipping it remember it's only secured
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by the PCIe slot and by the two screws up here so if the card is not very stiff
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over here there can be a lot of a lot of movement which can cause it to I mean
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I've even heard of cards in shipping mind you uh before they used spring
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mounted screws on the backs of video cards this is why everyone started doing
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it where the coolers actually coming off from vibration and from movement it can
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also cause undue strain uh on the PCIe
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slot and on the screws if you don't have that stiffening piece there so that's uh
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that's one thing that they have added to this card versus the 460 we've got dual
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six pin PCIe connectors on the back of the card so it should have support for
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almost any power supply any modern power supply should be able to run this card
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just fine here's your four pin pwm fan
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control uh at the top of the board you do find your SLI Bridge connector so
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there is just one which means two-way SLI not three-way SLI the back of the
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card looks pretty much like we've come to expect from anything using this
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particular PCB you guys are welcome to uh look for the if you want but I
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suspect you will not find any differences between the appearance of
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the 460 Hawk and the GTX twin frozer 2
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560 GTX twin frozer 2 these these names are getting very confusing I have to
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confess all right on the back of the card you find dual DVI if I can ever get
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this connector plug cover thing off as well as mini HDMI so that's why you have
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that adapter now about the twin frozer 2 cooler you can see here there are some
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vent holes so you're going to have a little bit of heat being expelled outside of the cas but most of it is
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going to be expelled inside the case so there's always compromises to be made
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and the compromise MSI has made is they have opted for lower overall G GPU
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temperatures which should result in better overclocking at the by
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sacrificing the overall case temperatures a little bit so you want to
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make sure you got a decently ventilated case with good cooling fans and you
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shouldn't run into any problems thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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GTX 560 non-ti don't forget to subscribe
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