Chaintech FX71 Apogee (GeForce FX 5600 Ultra)

Card Layout

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, first impressions are everything! And this card has got it all. Unlike most FX5600 cards out there, the entire card is covered with the cooling fan being the only visible feature. The covering itself consists of two part, a piece of gold aluminum covered by a sheet of clear plastic. The plastic piece has "Apogee" in raised lettering, while on the aluminum we can clearly see the "GeForce FX 5600Ultra".

Flipping the card over we see that Chaintech has put a heatspreader on the bottom to cover the backside of the memory. With their memory running at 800MHz (which is MUCH higher than other 5600s) I'm sure that it needs all the help it can get to keep cool.

Taking just a quick look at the two ends before we pop the hood on this puppy, we can see the power connector peeking out from under. And right beside the power connector.....is an LED! Yep this card lights up, way cool dudes!

The other end of the card is that standard monitor and LCD plugs-ins along with your vid access. The only thing different on this card is the color of the attachment plate, which is gold instead of aluminum to match the rest of the card.

The cover of the card is held on by two screws on the bottom and a couple of retainer clips. Removing the screws and sliding the cover off reveals a whole lot of gold on the card in the form of heatsinks galore.

The first one we notice is the big honkin' GPU sink. It looks like a passive heatsink, but in fact is not. This is part of Chaintech Gas-Turbine cooling system. Looking in front of the sink, we see a fan with a clear plastic shroud around it. The fan is designed to blow air across the sink and through the grooves to help push the heat away from the GPU.

And to help keep the memory cool, they've thrown a couple of good size sinks on those as well. 

Remember that blue LED that I pointed out earlier on the outside of the cover? Well, Chaintech has gone and embedded another LED on the PCB of the card itself. I know it's a little hard to see in the pic, but it's there.

This puppy should light up like the Fourth of July!