ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti Direct Cu II Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,667 words · ~8 min read
0:00
now this is something I've been wanting to unbox for a little while this is the
0:03
GTX 560 TI direct cu2 so basically this
0:08
is an aftermarket cooled GTX 560 and
0:11
once we open this up I'm actually going to find out if it is also a
0:16
non-reference PCB GTX 560 so the only
0:19
way to find that out is to open the box which I'm a big fan of doing so the dual
0:23
fan design is evidently up to 20° cooler
0:26
it uses direct GPU contact in order to ensure that it gets get well direct
0:31
contact with the GPU for the heat pipes for better cooling performance it also
0:35
has super alloy power which blends select elements under a Seuss exclusive
0:40
formula resulting in a 15% performance increase 2.5 times longer product
0:45
lifespan and 35° 35° cooler operation
0:49
that's quite a bold claim voltage tweak technology allows you to boost the GPU
0:53
voltages via ASUS smart doctor to achieve up to 50% faster clock speed
0:57
over clocking capability may be varied by different cards and platforms extreme cooling is required to achieve 50%
1:01
faster okay uh something about the card
1:05
General Technologies yes this is a GeForce card so it does support Cuda SLI
1:10
3D Vision it supports even 3D Vision
1:13
surround when you are in SLI mode it is a 1 gig card so it has a standard
1:19
configuration as far as memory is concerned and we're going to go ahead
1:23
and get this opened up o nice box look at that matte black box with nice gold
1:29
font on on it I like it I've come to
1:32
appreciate fine boxes ooh it gets even nicer when we get
1:37
inside look at that you know how expensive it is to have to make a box
1:41
that's black on both sides you guys have no idea compared to just like a white
1:47
box or just a plain cardboard box it's much more expensive so uh yeah ASUS
1:53
really put everything into the packaging of this product just nice to see them
1:57
care you know you can see the card self is well protected by nice closed cell
2:02
foam here okay what do we got here we
2:05
got uh video drivers okay gamer OSD smart doctor okay so some ASUS software
2:10
download the latest from the ASUS website instead okay here we've also got
2:15
a quick setup guide o look at that in color I'm
2:20
impressed again very impressed color setup guide here we've got our
2:25
accessories compartment So that's its own little box
2:30
these guys are going after razor at this point well not quite Razer razer's
2:34
pretty got pretty good packaging so here's kind of a neat thing this is a
2:37
mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and you can see it's actually Twisted at a right
2:42
angle so that plugging an HDMI cable in won't interfere with plugging something
2:46
into the next over DVI port here we've
2:49
got a DVI to VGA adapter and two dual
2:53
dual MOX to single PCI E6 pin power
2:57
adapters finally we have the card itself which does not come in an anti-static
3:01
bag so I'm going to go ahead and assume that this is anti-static foam this is a
3:05
very nice looking card I'll tell you guys that right off the bat here cuz it
3:10
has my favorite thing in the world well not my favorite thing in the
3:14
world but I really like it matte black PCB Bravo ASUS matte black PCB love it
3:23
especially with some of the new motherboards out there on the p67
3:26
platform featuring matte black pcbs this
3:29
would go with with it just nicely you can also see they've got Tastefully
3:34
accented colors to go with their matte black so there's a little bit of oh okay
3:40
please don't do that cat's trying to steal the foam he loves foam he's such a
3:45
brat no no there okay so they've got
3:51
Tastefully accented colors to go along with the matte black so you can see the
3:55
aluminum heat sink here that is part of the direct CU cooler right there you can
4:00
see where the heat pipe goes and uh if I can get exactly the right angle here you
4:04
might be able to see where the GPU is
4:08
down there there that's the GPU that you can see through the crack there okay and
4:11
then they've got a couple of Seuss logos which are also nice like silver one of
4:15
them is a little bit a skew but we can fix that quite easily there we go we've
4:19
got dual six pin PCIe power connectors required to run this board and we've
4:24
also got a single SLI connector up here at the top of the PCB so what that means
4:30
is that you have support for two-way SLI but not three-way and not four-way okay
4:36
dual fans these both look like 80 mm fans and this is kind of a unique layout
4:41
okay so you can see this is this is kind of neat it's like kind of a hybrid
4:45
design so this is a heat sink okay this is a heat sink with a fan and then what
4:50
ASUS has also done so that directly cools the GPU there's actually slots in
4:56
the heat sink here here and here where it looks like I'm just going to look for
5:00
them yeah it looks like that's to give direct ventilation here I'm going to try
5:04
and get a little bit more light for you guys here to the memory chip see the
5:07
memory chips in there so that gives you direct air flow over the memory chips
5:11
instead of relying on heat sinks to cool them which can often just insulate them
5:14
more than anything else see more memory chips here which are also have direct
5:18
exposure to air flow very clever little
5:21
design choice to make and then what you can see they've done is they've actually
5:25
put those direct touch heat pipes down there right over the GPU and then made
5:29
little fin Arrangement so this is It's a
5:33
heat sink but it's also a heat pipe cooler so that means that both of these
5:37
fans are able to be effective at cooling that GPU over there without isus
5:42
actually having to use so many heat pipes to spread out the heat load
5:46
because they're using a direct heat sink and a heat pipe cooler so that's pretty
5:49
neat so this is the direct cu2 cooler we've got some little red accents to
5:54
look quite nice we've got a PCI Express
5:57
16x interface down here at the bottom with a standard lock so I did answer my
6:01
own question when I saw that it was a matte black PCB because NVIDIA reference
6:05
cards do not use a matte black PCB uh let's see what else we got here
6:09
there's a little dedicated heat sink here you can see it right there for the
6:13
mosfets that is for the voltage delivery so that's on that side and you can kind
6:18
of see it from the top there as well it's that one right there and let's see
6:21
what else we got this is a nice metal shroud too they're using a metal shroud
6:25
for the cooler so what that means is that it's not cheap it's not plastic
6:30
very very nice and uh what's this this
6:34
seems to be just a plate for making the card more rigid which is smart so you
6:39
can see that this plate is bolted into the PCB here and here and it's also
6:43
bolted into the io Shield here so that's going to give your card instead of just
6:47
being held in by the PCI Express lot and
6:51
the two screws here it's going to give it a little bit more rigidity so it'll
6:54
actually sit flat I've had many a card installed in my system that kind of
6:58
looks like this when it's installed because of the weight of the
7:02
cooler okay let's have a look at the back of the card you can see that the
7:05
direct cu2 even though it has a slot here is not going to be doing hold on
7:10
focus focus focus you stupid thing is not going to be doing a whole lot of
7:14
exhaust out of this vent cuz the fan is actually like way over here and there's
7:20
no direct airflow path from the fan to the vent so this is mostly going to
7:25
exhaust the air inside your case so you do have to make a trade-off you got to
7:28
decide what's more important to me do I want lower GPU temps overall so more
7:33
overclocking on my GPU or do I want lower case temps now remember you can
7:38
combat the internal exhaust just by having a well ventilated case versus
7:42
having an external exhaust designed for your card like say for example the GTX
7:48
580 reference card that's over there where it exhausts all of the air outside
7:52
of the case and I think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about
7:56
the GTX 560 direct cu too there's our
8:00
DVI ports there's our mini HDMI port
8:03
thank you for checking out my unboxing of this card and I will do a follow-up
8:07
comparing it in terms of temperatures
8:10
against the reference design GTX 560ti
8:14
that I also have oh I didn't even mention yes this is a factory
8:18
overclocked card so it comes clocked at 830 MHz on the core don't forget to
8:23
subscribe guys