ASUS HD4890 with extreme heatpipe-cooling

Now that the first Radeon HD4890 cards with reference coolers have become available in large quantities, models with alternative coolers are being introduced. PowerColor already showed an HD4890 with watercooling, and Zerotherm showed us a model with aircooling, both cards featured the stock frequencies. 

Voorafgaand aan deze aankondigingen van PowerColor kregen we al beelden te zien van een speciale Radeon HD4890 uitvoering van ASUS, al was er toen niet veel meer zichtbaar dan een kale printplaat zonder koeling. Inmiddels is de kaart in volledige gedaante op de foto gezet en kunnen we tot de conclusie komen dat het inderdaad een extreme videokaart is. ASUS heeft namelijk niet alleen de videokaart zelf, maar ook het complete koelblok, ontworpen voor maximale prestaties.

The cooling block consists of a large copper base for the GPU, which has six thick heatpipes mounted on top of it. These heatpipes run across the entire length of the graphics card, cooling down not only the 3D-chip, but also the memory chips and the power provision. On the other side of the heatpipes, a large aluminum cooling block has been placed, which is kept cool by two fans. The largest fan rotates clockwise and is primarily meant to keep the 3D-chip cooled down. The second cooler rotates counter-clockwise and specifically cools the power of the card. 

Thanks to this alternative heatpipecooling, ASUS' card should be at least 10 degrees Celsius cooler than a conventional HD4890, whilst having the clock frequencies increased to 900 MHz for the core and 1000 MHz for the GDDR5 memory. It's still unclear what this card will be named when it's released. 

image source: Nordic Hardware

Tags: gddr5 hd4890 heatpipe radeon

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