Card Layout and Photos
So like I said in the opening, the new cooler design on the GTX 1070 is a departure from the last generation. EVGA dropped the all plastic design and has started to bring a little metal into the fan shrouds design. The overall layout is the same as the ACX 2.0 cards, we have two large fans placed closer to the middle of the card. In the space around the fans though EVGA has added metal plates with mesh inserts onto the plastic shroud. In addition to that, there are a few white mesh areas that are actually backlit. This specific card just has white backlighting but the FTW edition has a similar design but with RGB lighting.
The ACX 3.0 cooling design is unique as well. For starters, they have actually sandwiched the cards PCB between two different plates. The inner plate has a cutout for the GPU and for the taller power chokes. It does, however, sit directly on top of the memory and MOSFETs helping pull the heat away from those. Then on top of this plate, the heatsink is focused on using heatpipes to pull heat from the GPU out into the two heatsinks. The heatsinks of course only take up the space behind the two fans.
Like just about every card with upgraded cooling, the Gaming ACX 3.0 does have open areas around all three edges that help vent the air blow down through the heatsinks into your case. So this design isn’t the best option for cases with little or no cooling like a few of the small form factor cases. Most cases, however, should be able to handle the extra heat being vented into the case. When we look at the sides of the card we can better see the PCB sitting between the two different plates. I love that on the end of the card EVGA included a plate with their logo on it. Up on the top edge, they also have a thick plate sticking up. This is backlit as well and has the EVGA logo as well as the GTX 1070 to show exactly what card you have. I like this better than the generic Geforce GTX on the Founders Edition cards. The large plate does stick up and is the tallest part of the card, so keep that in mind as well.
On the front they also have small plates riveted on in the center of the card between the two fans. One has the model name and the other has the EVGA logo. The logos don’t glow, but behind the plates are those white backlit areas so they will have a nice glow to them. The two fans for the ACX 3.0 cooler are 90mm’s each. This is drastically different than the giant fans that MSI packed into their cards. This is a good thing, though, this is the size fans should be, large but not large enough to force the cooler to be taller than a PCI slot. The EVGA design does go a little taller than a Founders Edition card due to the backlit plate on top, but the MSI card was an inch taller. Sorry about that, I went on a bit of a tangent. Anyhow the two fans are both blacked out and with the exception of a bit of a twist to the fan blades they aren’t anything crazy. They don’t have fins or cuts in them or fins on top of fins with cuts. They do however have a nice EVGA E in the center, though.
For power, EVGA went with the same 8-pin connection that the Founders Edition card has. While this is an overclocked card, the FE cards had more than enough headroom with the 8-pin, there is no reason to jump up beyond that here. We can also see the small SC logo on the fan shroud in this photo.
Like the GTX 1080, the GTX 1070’s do support SLI but they only support dual SLI. The two SLI bridge connections up top would normally indicate support for 3 and 4 card SLI but Nvidia has actually moved to a new bridge design that is a little faster and great for when you are running higher resolutions.
The back of the GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX 3.0 has a nice aluminum backplate. The backplate is designed with the EVGA logo cut out as well as four other vents. This and a large gap between the backplate and the PCB should help keep things cool while also giving the card a lot of strength to prevent sagging. In each of the vent hole, they included mesh. The EVGA logo and the GTX 1070 logo are upside down so that when the card is installed in most cases it is readable.
For display connections, EVGA didn’t change anything at all from the Founders Edition. You get a single DVI connection, one full-sized HDMI, and three full-sized DisplayPort connections. What they do different though is the PCI plate itself. The vent holes are so large that there is hardly any metal at all between them. This gives the card less restriction in the air that does end up going out the back. I bet a similar backplate on a Founders Edition card would give a nice cooling improvement.
Here is a shot of the card all lit up and running. You will notice that the fans don’t turn on unless you are putting load on the card to keep the noise down. The lighting doesn’t stand out too much in this photo simply because it was in a well-lit room, not in an enclosed case. The white lighting is a good choice that shouldn’t clash in most builds. The FTW card with its RGB lighting is much cooler, though. I would love to have a pair of those with the lighting set orange to match that motherboard.
