The card
ASUS decided to equip the GeForce GTX 960 Strix with a new version
of their famous DirectCU II cooler. In case of this graphics card you get four heatpipes,two with six millimeter diameter
and two with 8 millimeter diameter all connected to the GPU. Soldered to the heatpipes is the fin stack which is being
provided with fresh air via two fans. The fans on the new STRIX series are
designed to spin only when GPU temprature reaches 65 degrees, which means that in
2D mode they are completeley off. Also, under low loads the fans do not start to
spin. Under high-load the noise level is almost inaudible, subjectively
speaking.
The ASUS GTX 960 Strix OC Edition graphics card, or to be precise our sample of
it, allowed a maximum stable overclock of 1'488 MHz
for the GPU and 2'050 MHz on the memory side. We used Furemark V1.11.0 Geeks3D
benchmark with 15 minutes duration and 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme With these clocks we had to feed the GPU
with 1.21 Volts and the memory ran at stock voltages.