KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER EX GAMER BLACK
August, 2019Type
Graphics CardPrice
$559.99 USKFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER EX GAMER BLACK Closer Look + Teardown
KFA2 has featured their high-end triple-fan cooling solution on the RTX 2070 SUPER EX GAMER Black. It also comes in white color for the same price so you'd at least have options to select for your setup. The RTX 2070 SUPER EX GAMER measures at 305 x 143 x 51 mm and has quite some weight to it. You would require 2.5 slots worth of free space for installation.
You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a dual card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such setup. The cooling shroud extends all the way to the back of the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.
The back of the card features a solid backplate which looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.
In terms of design, KFA2 has featured three of their 90mm fans on the graphics card. The fans are based off an acrylic design which means they will be able to reflect and adapt all the RGB lights that are running within your PC.
The shroud is a slightly modified version of the one featured on the RTX 2070 EX GAMER, updated with a nice brushed-aluminum finish on the front and coupled with a futuristic design theme. The shroud is made out of metal and does add some durability to the card's main structure.
Coming back to the fans, the 90mm design has 9 fan wings that push air towards the large heat sink underneath the shroud.
These fans are known as the EX Tri-series fans which offer 90% more airflow and more air pressure than their previous generation Twin fans. This allows for a higher TDP of 260W on the RTX 2070 EX SUPER, allowing for higher clocks and overclocking.
KFA2 is using their Silent Extreme Technology which offers silent fan operation on the card. The technology is hybrid in nature which allows for different types of fan operation. Under silent load, all three fans will stop operating while in normal load, the front two fans will spin with the one on the end switched off until the card hits its temperature threshold of 60C.
I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate which the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The matte black finish looks great along with the white textures.
There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. There are open vents for the hot air to move out from the back too. KFA2 is also using heat pads beneath the backplate which offer more cooling to the electrical circuitry on the PCB.
Gone is SLI and now we have the latest NVLINK gold finger connectors. The RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 SUPER come with a single NVLINK connector which allows for 2-Way multi-GPU functionality. The top-end graphics cards ($500 US+) are the only ones to support NVLINK connectivity so multi-GPU is only for the high-end spectrum of cards and for good reason. Only these cards have enough bandwidth that can drive another GPU of their tier as anything below wouldn't have the power to interlink to the other card.
A single x8 NVLINK channel provides 25 GB/s peak bandwidth. There are two x8 links on the TU102 GPU and a single x8 link on the Turing TU104 GPU. The TU102 GPU features 50 GB/s of bandwidth in parallel and 100 GB/s bandwidth bi-directionally. Using NVLINK on high-end cards would be beneficial in high-resolution gaming but there’s a reason NVIDIA still restricts users from doing 3 and 4 way SLI.
Multi-GPU still isn’t optimized so you won’t see much benefits unless you are running the highest-end graphics cards. That’s another reason why the RTX 2070 and below are deprived of NVLINK connectors. The NVLINK connectors cost $79 US each and are sold separately. Currently, only NVIDIA is selling them as the AIB cards don’t include any such connectors but that may change once the standard is adopted widely.
With the outsides of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of the graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink which the cards utilize.
The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it. It also comes with the fin stack design which I want to shed some light on as it is a turn away from traditional fin design and one that may actually offer better cooling on such power-hungry graphics cards which utilize the TU102 and TU104 GPUs.
Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of 25cm high performance composite heat pipes which run through both aluminum fin stacks and lead to the central GPU copper-based baseplate. The heatsink has adequate thermal pads, making contact with the VRMS, MOSFETs and the memory dies.
I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a, & a single HDMI 2.0b.
KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER EX GAMER Teardown:
KFA2 makes use of a 7+2 phase PWM design and MOSFETs with shielded inductors which are part of their premium PCB design. The memory chips are from Micron and have the '9JA77 D9WCW' model number which is for the 14 Gbps dies. The card has thermal pads placed on top of all 8 modules which cover the entire die and not just a partial area. There's a long thermal pad on the MOSFETs too which offers thermal transfer to the main heatsink, keeping them running stable.
The KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER EX GAMER BLACK is a powered by an 8+6 pin connector configuration. The card can sip in up to 300 Watts of power from its power delivery but has an official rated TDP of 225W by KFA2.
KFA2 GeForce RTX SUPER EX GAMER Series RGB Lighting Gallery:
KFA2 has also added RGB to their latest RTX and RTX SUPER series graphics cards. Their top of the line GALAX HOF lineup has the whole spiral ring design going on but the EX GAMER series features a lighter touch with the side 'What's Your Game' quote lit up using their RGB effect technology.
Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.
Contents
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The KFA2 EX GAMER BLACK is a great custom cooled card in their wide selection of RTX SUPER graphics cards that looks great and even comes in a white-colored variant. The 60 MHz factory overclock and the Xtreme Tuner Plus software with awesome fan control really makes this card a well-built option for those looking for a nice RTX 2070 SUPER design.
- Great performance for 1440p and 1080p Gaming
- Great upgrade from GTX 970, GTX 1070, GTX 1080
- Factory Overclocked Out of Box (+60 MHz over Founders Edition)
- EX GAMER design with brushed aluminum finish looks great.
- Silent Extreme Technology With multiple fan profiles for silent operation
- Great overclocking potential (GPU/VRAM), full tuning options
- Backplate includes heat pads for increased heat dissipation
- RGB Lighting support on the sides are a plus
- Support for real-time ray tracing and DLSS features in next-generation gaming titles
- Good driver support for GeForce products, compatibility with DX11, DX12, Vulkan, OpenGL titles
- Lot's of display connectivity, great for VR and multi-display PCs.
Pros
- A bit pricey than other options ($559.99 US)
- High Power Consumption when overclocked
- No Memory overclock out of the box
Cons
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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