Under the hood:

- There is a full coverage, single piece aluminium plate covering all the necessary components with thermal pads in place to facilitate heat transfer into the plate.
- Components covered with thermal pads include; All the memory chips, all VRM chips, and all power chokes (last 2 relate to power delivery system).
- Components covered with thermal pads have a direct heat transfer path straight up to the heat sink, while also indirectly via the copper core and heat pipes.
- The aluminium plate adds a lot of rigidity to the entire card, its actually quite sturdy, definitely respectable strength.
- The GPU die is exclusively covered by the copper core, there are 3x 6mm heat pipes transporting the heat into the fin stack. The stack runs horizontally along the length of the card, so the hot air will be ejected out the front (where the display ports are) and the back.
- The fin stack is nothing special, but it gets the job done. It is however more sensitive to ambient temperatures and/or poor air flow. It hovers in the high 60s and mid 70s (degrees c) with the power limit at 120%, with an OC of 170 core 500 mem. With slightly less than desirable conditions, the card will dabble in the 80s (degrees c) with max fan speed. With reasonable case air flow, this is not a concern, especially if you don't overclock.
- The fans are as noisy as what you would expect normal 90mm fans to be.
- There is audible (barely) coil whine from the power delivery system, but that is quickly muffled out by the noise from the fans, and can vary from different units.

First impressions unboxing:

- The plastic shroud is low quality and passes mostly as a means to retain the fans and provide some level of cover/aesthetic, but it is really nothing special.
- There is no backplate, so I felt I needed pay more attention to not damaging the delicate components on the back.
- The plastic in general is not great quality (including the fans), but it is acceptable, so its fine.

Overall, You buy this card to get the necessities with none of the bling, and all of the performance is there.