Design and Engineering:
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| Squeezing the lever on the heat sink fan your able to butterfly the heat sinks in seconds. | The the squeeze of the lever, your able to set the heat sinks in one of two positions |
We applaud the engineers with this design. The fact that you don’t need tools to make the change is simply awesome engineering.
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| There are two settings for the butter flying of the heat sink fans (flat and angled). | Closer look at the hinge of the heat pipes |
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| Close up of the heat sink while in butterfly mode | Close up of the other heat sink while set in the butterfly mode. |
Setting the heat sink fans to their elevated position, the Calibre 9800GTX+’s heat sink is able to pull air that is further from the hot card, also allowing air to flow through the heat sinks easier since there is less obstructions (the card) in the way. Benchmark tests showed the temp was between two and three degrees difference between running the heat sinks in butterfly mode and the standard position. Of course running the card in the butterfly mode will take up more space, so it won’t be possible to have the card set in buttefly mode and SLI two cards.
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| Here the heatsinks are set to their extended setting. | Close up shows that the heatsink in the extended mode is preventing access to install a PCI card. |
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| Here we moved the heatsink up enough to install our PCI Sound card. Then we pulled the heatsink back down as far as we could without touching the soundcard. In this position, the heatsink was not in a locked position, so we would risk the heatsink falling down and touching the sound card and grounding itself causing real damage to our system. | |
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| Close up of the pin-out of SLI connection. | Two X 6 Pin Power sources are required for this card |
The power requirements of the Calibre 9800GTX+ includes two 6 pin PCI-E power plugs. It is something to take note of when your planning on building your next rig, as you may need get a bigger power supply to support you power needs. Lets take a look at those benchmark, shall we?
