We pull apart NVIDIA's GTX470 card, courtesy of GIGABYTE!
NVIDIA launched their GTX480 card last month with significant fanfare and a mixed bag of results (all of which you can read about in Issue 112 of Atomic!), but what we haven't looked at in detail is their GTX470. Reference samples from NVIDIA direct are limited, with Atomic being the only mag in Australia to get a GTX480, so GIGABYTE helpfully offered up their version of the GTX470 for us to take apart.
The GTX470 is closer to what we've seen from NVIDIA's past designs than the GTX480, consisting of the same large black shroud with fan, heatsink and fins all contained. While the TDP remains lower at 215W, the heatsink within still requires five heatpipes to move the heat around efficiently. The heatsink's fins are constructed from aluminium, while the heatpipes are bare copper.
Even though it's not as complex to pull apart as the GTX295 was, nor the GTX480, the GTX470 has its own challenges and considerations to keep in mind - especially when putting it back together. For a card that'll cost you $569 (as listed at PC Case Gear), the last thing you'd want to happen is to kill it. With the card in hand, there are a few other things you'll need to grab first:
Our preparations made, jump into the gallery of pics to see how to pull apart NVIDIA's GTX470 card, and see if it survived!
Issue: 133 | February, 2012