MSI R9 380 Gaming 4G Overview
MSI has really done a great job making all of their gaming series cards look the same. You know what a gaming series card looks like with its red and black design. This design will match MSI’s own gaming series motherboards as well as any motherboard that has a red or black design.
MSI is using their Twin Frozr V cooling solution on this card. This cooling solution is made up of two 100mm Torx fans, an aluminum heatsink stack, and a number of copper heatpipes. This card also features MSI’s Zero Frozr technology that will turn the fans off when they are not needed. This of course cuts down on noise and power consumption.
Taking a look at the card from the side we can see that it is a dual-slot card. The card gets power from two 6-pin PCI-Express power connections. There is also a MSI logo on the top edge of the card, which will face out and be seen if you have a case window. This logo will light up when your system is powered on.
The back of the card has a very nice backplate on it with the MSI dragon logo. This backplate not only looks good, but helps cool the card a bit as it acts as a minor heatsink. You will also notice no CrossFire connectors on the card, since this card is based off Tonga no need for those as it uses XDMA CrossFire via its PCI-Express connection.
Looking at display connections this card has dual-link DVI, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.
To remove the cooling solution all you have to do is remove four screws from the bottom of the card. Once removed we can see that MSI is using a metal plate to help cool the memory and other components on the card. This also gives the card better stability.
Taking a closer look at the heatsink we can see there is a very large heatsink base with three heatpipes that come out of the base and go into the heatsink.
