Gigabyte GTX 780 WindForce OC Review

A Closer Look

Gigabyte’s WindForce design has really come a long way in a short period of time in terms of improvements. Today I can happily say that the WindForce cooling solution is one I now find very aesthetically pleasing and I think Gigabyte’s evolutions have been great. The design uses a metal outer shroud that has the WindForce branding, three 80mm fans and beanth all that you can see the five copper heatpipes and two independent heatsink stacks. The one on the right is different to the one on the left as the left heatsink makes direct contact with the PCB to cool some VRM components.

The PCB is black and looks pretty clean – for an enthusiast level card this is essential and a good choice by Gigabyte.

The top features open ventilation to improve cooling, all the best graphics card cooling solutions exhaust into the case so I’ve got no problems with this design.

The Gigabyte GTX 780 WindForce OC uses two 8 pins for power, that’s different to the 6 and 8 pin on the reference design.

There are two SLI fingers for up to 3 way SLI “native” support. What I mean by this is that 4 Way SLI is possible, but isn’t officially supported by Nvidia drivers. There are 4 Way SLI workarounds and fixes on the internet if you’re loaded enough to have four GTX 780s. The graphics card also conforms to a dual slot sizing so you’ll have no problems running 2, 3 or 4 of these if you want.

The bottom, like the top, is open for ventilation.

At the end, which is also open, we can see those five heat pipes.

The I/O includes dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. You can run Nvidia Surround across three displays with an additional fourth accessory display. You can use any combination of ports.