Atomic HD 3870 X2 water cooling system comes pre-assembled, so no assembly is required by the user. The water pump and the water tank comes attached to the radiator and the system is sealed, coming already with coolant installed – i.e., this is a “maintenance free” system.

The memory chips located on the back of the card, however, aren’t cooled by the water cooling system, which is the only negative point we saw on this video card.

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Figure 5: Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 X2.

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Figure 6: Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 X2, back view.

On Figures 7 and 8 you can see the radiator. It uses one 120 mm brushless fan, which spins very slowly, producing no noise. Talking about noise, the water cooling system is somewhat noisy when you first turn on the computer, but the noise level drops after a while, when the water is flowing at a constant rate.

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Figure 7: Radiator from the water cooling system.

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Figure 8: Radiator from the water cooling system.

The video card requires two auxiliary power cables, one using a 6-pin connector and the other using a 8-pin connector. The water cooling system requires one standard peripheral power connector.