Hot on the heels of last week's AMD Radeon HD 7970 Dissasembly Guide is another one, and this time we're looking at the decidedly more affordable Radeon HD 7870.
While it's not positioned at the high-end of the range like the HD 5870 was (that crown goes to the 79XX cards), the 7870 is still a great choice for the average enthusiast - especially if they want decent value for money.
The 7870, codenamed Pitcairn XT, runs 2.8 billion 28nm transistors and offers 1280 cores; consuming a maximum of 175 Watts of power. Compared to its older brother, the cooling requirements here are much lower - which can be seen in the fewer power phases on the PCB, amongst other things.
Length-wise it's 247 millimetres, which is just 19mm shy of the 266 millimetres of the 7970, and the display options remain the same. The only cosmetic changes are the length, actually, as the display outputs remain the same and the colour scheme/styling is effectively identical.
With all other things equal, there's only so much difference here.
As the thermal production of the 7870 is not as high as the 7970, we don't expect to see more than 2-4 degrees of thermal improvement when changing the stock thermal paste - but temps should improve slightly.
What you'll need
The 7870 is a relatively standard card that is quite easy to pull apart, but we still recommend a few things:
- A well-lit, flat workspace
- Philips head screwdrivers: Medium and Small
- Pliers
- Isopropyl alcohol, acetone, or your favourite thermal goop cleaner
- Paper towel
- Replacement thermal paste
- Anti-static wristband (never a bad idea)
As always, we take no responsibility for damage caused to components or fried tech. It's not very likely, but it's within the realm of possibility. If you're unsure of anything, just don't do it. With everything said and done jump into the disassembly guide to see how the AMD Radeon HD 7870 comes apart.
This shot isn't really relevant to the disassembly, we just thought it looked cool.
See our other guides below:
AMD Radeon HD 7970 Reference Dissasembly Guide
AMD Radeon HD 6870 Reference Disassembly Guide
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 Reference Dissasembly Guide
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Reference Dissasembly Guide
AMD Radeon HD 4890 Reference Dissasembly Guide
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Reference Dissasembly Guide
We're hoping to do a NVIDIA GTX 680 guide, just as soon as we can get our hands on a reference-design card (with permission to pull it apart).
