Closer Look and Cooling
Sapphire HD7790 DUAL-X like it’s name suggests has two fans connected to one socket on the PCB. Fans speed depends from GPU temperature and as default it’s controller automatically, however we can change it using Sapphire software to work at its maximum speed. For daily work it’s maybe not so important but is handy while overclocking.
At the back side of the card we can see one Display Port, one HDMI and two DVI. One DVI is Dual-Link D while second is Dual-Link I.
Here we see already mentioned fan cables and single connector. We can also see that Sapphire used longer PCB which presents good especially that cooling solution is larger than standard reference PCB.
Here again we can see that longer PCB which is painted black. Many gamers like everything black so we can say it’s some advantage especially that color is nearly the same as main part of the cooler.
On the below photo we also see six pin power connector which is slightly moved to the back of the card comparing to reference boards.
After removing cooler, we can see small GPU and four memory chips made by Hynix.
Power phases are being cooled by small heatsink which is good as it can help with stability during overclocking and not all HD7790 have it.
As usual , Sapphire used thick heatpipes in their cooling. There are only two heatpipes but as we see they’re covering nearly all GPU surface.
Between memory chips and heatspreader are quite thick thermal pads. Memory isn’t getting too hot so it’s more than enough. Many HD7790 cards don’t even have memory cooling and nearly all of these cards have the same memory specification.
Standard TIM ( thermal interface material ) on the GPU is actually pretty good. Temperature of the core was about the same after replacing it with Arctic MX4 thermal paste.
