MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X Review

Time to take graphics card apart. To detach the cooler you need to remove 4 spring screws, which are directly connected to the GPU plate (as shown below). Bear in mind, there are three cable headers on the card, some are hard to unplug.

Thermal compound quality

I think MSI may be applying little too much compound, it’s hard to clean the GPU and it could affect thermal characteristics of the GPU.

The board

Unlike GTX 1080 GAMING X, the baseplate of 1080 TI GAMING X ends right before power section. The predecessor had an additional plate for VRM section. The GTX 1080 Ti goes a bit further but connecting VRM section directly to the heatsink with thermal pads.

MSI’s board has 8+2 phase design:

There are in total 16 voltage converters.

The cooler is attached to the shroud by four screws hidden under the fans.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION
		DIMENSIONS WIDTH: 29.0 cm LENGTH: 14.0 cm HEIGHT: 2.5-slot (51 mm) WEIGHT: 1.26 kg COOLING SOLUTION Dual-fan Twin Frozr VI cooler with TORX 2.0 fans.
		DISPLAY CONNECTORS 2x DisplayPort 1.4 2x HDMI 2.0 1x DVI-D DL
		PCB DESIGN 8+2 Phase power design 2x 8-Pin power connector INTERFACE PCI-Express 3.0 x16 MEMORY Micron 6ZA77D9VRL

Packaging

Card is bundled with quick start guide, comic ‘Dragon Lucky’ manual, CD with drivers and 6-pin to 8-pin power adapter.