A Closer Look

KFA²'s cooler uses a large copper base with five heatpipes to transport heat away from the GPU surface.


Once we remove the main heatsink, you can see two metal pieces on the card, one covers the memory chips and the other the voltage regulation circuitry.


The card requires two 8-pin PCI-Express power cables for operation. This power configuration is good for up to 375 W of power draw.


For voltage control, the card uses a CHiL CHL8318 which is a brand-new model, providing software voltage control and extensive monitoring features. It is also used on cards like the MSI GTX 680 Lightning and ZOTAC GTX 680 Extreme Edition. Unfortunately, NVIDIA does not allow board vendors to expose software voltage control on Kepler graphics cards.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GK104 graphics processor introduced the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. It is NVIDIA's first chip to be produced on a 28 nm process, at TSMC Taiwan. The transistor count is 3.54 billion.