Breaking it Open
Getting inside the ARES card is easy and only requires a basic screwdriver. You start with the 8 screws holding the shroud in place.
Underneath you will see the fan, copper heatsinks for the GPUs and the black heatsink used for the memory and other devices.
Getting the copper heatsinks off only requires another 8 screws.
Here you can see the pair of HD 5870 / Evergreen GPUs revealed.
This is the big reveal on the back of the card…
Removing everything from the front gives us a great view of the custom designed PCB from ASUS as well as the mystery third chip.
This is the ATI-built PCI Express bridge chip that connects the two HD 5870s to one another as well as the physical x16 PCIe bus.
