MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr IV Gaming OC Edition (2GB) Review – Dual SLI Rules

MSI GTX 760 TEARDOWN AND ANALYSIS

As you can see in the photo below, the Twin Frozr series of graphics cards is known for having two fans attached to their heatsinks. As such, it is a rather bulky graphics card, though not nearly the largest. Most of that bulk is made up of the aluminum heatsink, while the fans themselves are less than 1 inch thick.

Looking at the back side of the card, we can see the board’s pin connectors, PCI-E 16x 3.0 at the top of the above image, with the two SLI connectors at the bottom left. Center, around the arrangement of 4 screws (these hold the heatsink in place), are the card’s memory chips. Each one is next to a blank space where a memory chip would be installed in a 4GB version of this card. On one of those screws is a “Warranty void if removed” sticker, which we ignored.

We removed the heatsink by unscrewing the four spring-loaded screws on the rear of the card and gently prying it off. The heatsink contacts the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit, center green square) with thermal paste between them. The black piece of metal is a sturdy reinforcement piece, which also helps with cooling.

Once we removed the 9 screws which held this piece of metal on, we got a good look at the components underneath. We noticed that the thermal paste did not actually have good coverage on the GPU. It was bare in two corners on the GPU and corresponding spots on the heatsink’s contact point. Not a point in favour, certainly, but we knew already that cooling was not a problem at all.

Again we see memory chips, and spaces for more memory chips for the 4GB version. There are chips on both sides of the board.

Power and fan connectors are on the far end of the board. Proper operation requires both 6-pin and 8-pin PCI-E power connectors.

Here’s the heatsink, and as you can see there are gaps in the thermal paste coverage corresponding to those gaps on the GPU itself. There are 4 heat pipes coming off of the main contact point to help dissipate heat.

Overall, the card we took apart was quite well built. Everything came apart properly when we took it apart, and went together properly on re-assembly. The only problem was the thermal paste spread. Anyone who would overclock this card beyond the stock overclocking modes (which voids the warranty anyways) would be well served by replacing the stock thermal paste with an even coverage of a good thermal paste.