GeForce GTX 480 - Without cooler
Removing the cooler is best done with a regular flathead screwdriver, all 19 of the screws. When removed you will be greeted by the following sight. NVIDIA’s reference design is, as usual, well disposed and organized, making the card easy on the eye. As usual there are several interesting things to find on the front of the card.
 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 without cooler |
 The cooler from the front |
 Base of the reference cooler – note “direct touch” heatpipes |
 The cooler for the memory and voltage regulators |
 Back of the same |
 GDDR5 memory from Samsung, clocked at 3696MHz |
 Capacitors and voltage circuitry lined up |
 The intake in all of its glory |
 GF100-375 – GTX 480 core, hiding beneath the IHS |
If you look at the pictures you can see that NVIDIA has used a two-part cooling system with one component for the memories and voltage regulators, where they also have the fan. Attached to this is a cooler dedicated for the GPU, a beefy aluminum beast that isn’t covered by any plastic cover, which puts it at risk of shortening other add-in cards. The heatpipes have direct contact with the GPU heatspreader, which has to be considered a tad bit innovative, since this is the first reference graphics card to use this technology (albeit an old one). We have to give credit to NVIDIA for finding room for a power supply for a GPU with three billion transistors. It has even sacrificed space for ventilation holes in the PCB, even if that may not be a good thing, but 250W of power requires a lot of cooling.
