After careful consideration I have decided to transfer all hardware review activities to a new domain. I purchased Hardwareasylum.com in 2012 and have been working hard to build a new and improved Ninjalane on that domain. If you are reading this you have reached one of the archived articles, news, projects and/or reviews that were left behind during the site migration.
Please update your bookmarks and be sure to visit the new and improved Ninjalane at Hardwareasylum.com
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Video Card Review
Author: Will West
Published: Friday, March 26, 2010
Card Layout and Features Cont.
Cooling performance starts with proper airflow. Air intakes are located in 3 spots on the card. The primary is the main fan opening on top of the card with a secondary located on the back.
The PCB has two small sections removed for additional airflow thru the PCB. It should be noted that the cage fan seems to be a little wider than on previous models, thus requiring more intake locations for proper cooling.
Heat output of the GTX 480 can be extremely high and the GeForce GTX 480 comes with a heatsink specially designed to help keep the chip cool. The 4x exposed 8mm heatpipes not only do a great job of removing heat from the GPU but look extremely sharp in black chrome.
The decorative top found on the GTX 480 not only looks cool in black chrome but is an integral part of the GPU heatsink. This part does get extremely hot but looks cool doing it.
The new GTX 480 does not come with a heatsink reinforcement plate like what has been found on other GeForce launch cards. Maybe the lack of a back plate is to keep the pricing down, regardless of the reason we do hope they show up on future GTX cards when they hit retail shelves.
The GeForce GTX 480 takes a 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors with peak power consumption around 250 Watts. NVidia suggests at least a 600w power supply to run this card and even higher depending on your system setup and component usage.
