GTX 760 Gaming ITX Card Layout and Photos

As I mentioned before when MSI showed off pictures of the GTX 760 Gaming ITX I was really excited to see they were entering the small form factor gaming scene. Frankly other than a couple low end cards that underperform, Asus’s DirectCU Mini cards are the only cards in this market. Even with my excitement, I did have a few concerns with the Gaming ITX, specifically it looks a LOT like the Asus card. Although I was very excited to see them get into the market, I would have preferred the card step out on its own rather than follow in their footsteps, both for variety and also to see what MSI would do. Even so, the design isn’t completely the same, so let’s take a close look into the details.

First things first, the fan shroud is a little different than what I have seen from the TwinFrozr designs. Not just because it has a single fan, that is expected at this size, but also because of its boxy shape. That is part of the reason it looks so similar to the Asus card. But MSI did change things up slightly with the contrast in glossy and flat finishes as well as the three red stripes that angle across the card. On the left side they included a dragon on the shroud. I’m a big fan of how they made the dragon glossy on top of the flat black finish. This keeps the dragon theme that MSI is known for in their gaming line while not being to obnoxious with it.

Under the fan shroud with the cooling design I saw more similarities with the competition. The heatsink design looks to be a spot on match nearly with the exception of the fan design. The fan on this card is very unique and I didn’t even catch it at first. The fan is designed to push air down over the heatsink while also pushing air out through the heatsink around it. This is a combination of the fan style you would see on a reference card with an aftermarket fan design. They did this by putting fins on the outside of the fan where you can’t see them. All of this is important because when you are working with such a small space you have to get as much performance out of the space you have. MSI certainly used every inch of space they could to keep the GTX 760 cool.

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Although a small card like this is designed for a Mini-ITX build, you do still have two SLI bridge connections to be able to run up to triple SLI if you would like too.

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For power MSI went with an 8-pin power connection to save space over the two 6-pin connections that the reference GTX 760 went with. This is the same thing that Asus went with and it’s not a shock because it does save a little space on a very cramped PCB.

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For display connections MSI changed things up slightly over what I have been seeing on most other cards recently. Typically I see a double DVI ports, one HDMI, and a full sized DisplayPort. For the GTX 760 Gaming ITX MSI went with a single DVI port, one HDMI port, and two mini DisplayPorts. I would prefer to see two DVI connections generally though.

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The area the stand out the most when compared to the Asus card is the back of the MSI. Sure you can see here that the GTX 760 Gaming ITX does have the same taller PCB. But MSI did step things up here with a backplate covering most of the back of the card. Even though the card is short and won’t need the support when installed I do still think it is a good idea. In this case, when you are building small rigs wiring can get extremely tight. With a backplate you don’t have to worry as much about a wire rubbing on the back of your video card and shorting out.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33770 24 Jan 2014 16:35
For those of you who are into small form factor gaming, MSI has a new motherboard and video card that you might be interested in. Check it out!
Plague's Avatar
Plague replied the topic: #33772 24 Jan 2014 20:44
Nice stuff, motherboard is an upgrade to the one I have only intel. Video seem to be just a bit slower then the Asus card, which I find odd, but not bad either way. To bad these were not out last September. hehe

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