Asus Ares and Immensity technology preview

The Ares is the graphics card Batman would use

The digital power hardware - famed for running extremely hot and limiting Radeon HD 5000-series overclocks - is also separately cooled on the Ares, with an additional heatsink and fins directly underneath the large fan as well. This helps gives the card additional performance overhead.

Now, more on that fan - Asus claims a 600 per cent improvement (not a typo) over the stock Radeon HD 5970 fan. The stock fan, an 80 x 15mm model, produces a measly 18CFM, whereas Ares' 100 x 32mm angular finned fan pushes a whopping 119.2 CFM at full pelt.


David explained to us that not only does this give the Ares more raw cooling power but perhaps more helpfully, under light load conditions the card can spin the fan more slowly for the same airflow, reducing noise, and to top it all off, we're told it doesn't have that annoying whine those stock fans kick out either.

Even when compared to the higher clocked Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 4GB Toxic which uses the triple-fan Arctic Cooling HSF, Asus claims the Ares is superior, as the Sapphire fans shift only a total of 81CFM and the whole card is triple slot, versus the Ares standard double.


David explained that there's virtually no plastic on the Ares either - he was adamant that despite the additional weight, metal feels better, so even the shroud is aluminium. The retail models will feature the standard red and black Republic of Gamers-esq style, although Asus had produced a one-off entirely matt black version for us that matched the matt black PCB underneath.


I'm not going to lie to you, having something that looks like a piece of kit Batman would use had me considering whether I could grab it and make a run for it. Still, perhaps Asus has missed a trick with that one - and as much as we arguably see to much tech that's black, off all things this should be jet black.