MSI Radeon HD 4890 Cyclone SOC Gallery (2)

You'll spot two external power connectors. You connect your power supply to them both (6-pin connector). This card's TDP is roughly 225 Watts (peak) maximum. With an idle wattage of 60 Watts. The IDLE wattage can be this low due to flexible and dynamic clock frequencies on the GPU and lowering voltages based on GPU usage.

So on the top side of the card we can spot the heatpipes a little better. They lead to aluminum fins where a softly spinning PWM controlled fan will get rid of the heat. Unfortunately heat is exhausted inside the chassis.

And there it is, doing a good workout in our test-lab. It's seated in an X58 based platform with Core i7 running 3.8 GHz - 6 GB triple channel memory and a 1300 Watt power supply.

All sweaty and steamy hot... hmmm. Alright, we just installed the card. Let's have a peek at heat levels, power consumption and see how noisy the cooler is.