Friday, December 30th 2022
2-slot Air-Cooled GeForce RTX 4090 with Lateral Blower Shows Up in China
A Chinese graphics card manufacturer unveiled what is likely the only 2-slot, air-cooled GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in existence. Most gaming-segment RTX 4090 graphics cards tend to be 3-4 slots thick, and the only 2-slot ones are liquid-cooled ones. This is due to the 450 W stock typical graphics power rating of the RTX 4090, which can go as high as 600 W for certain custom-design cards. This product is aimed at the niche that wants a bunch of RTX 4090 cards in a space-constrained workstation chassis.
The card appears to be around 30-32 cm in length, and its height is strictly what constitutes "full-height" (11.5 cm). The cooler is in fact 1-2 mm thinner than what constitutes 2-slot; and probably uses a vapor-chamber plate welded to a stack of aluminium or copper channels that dissipate heat to airflow from a lateral-blower. The heatsink may look underpowered for a GPU like the RTX 4090, but probably over-relies on the blower operating at a very high RPM at all times—same principal as server cooling, where an array of 40 mm fans at nearly max-RPM push air through thin channel-type heatsinks cooling large 250 W TDP server processors. The card lacks a backplate to make it easier for the adjacent card to breathe in air. Power is drawn from a 16-pin ATX 12VHPWR connector located at the tail-end of the card, rather than on its top. The card reportedly has its power limits locked to 450 W (probably through power-connector signal keying). The card was briefly available on Alibaba-owned peer-to-peer trading platform Goofish, where it was priced at RMB ¥15,000 (about USD $2,150).
Source:
VideoCardz
The card appears to be around 30-32 cm in length, and its height is strictly what constitutes "full-height" (11.5 cm). The cooler is in fact 1-2 mm thinner than what constitutes 2-slot; and probably uses a vapor-chamber plate welded to a stack of aluminium or copper channels that dissipate heat to airflow from a lateral-blower. The heatsink may look underpowered for a GPU like the RTX 4090, but probably over-relies on the blower operating at a very high RPM at all times—same principal as server cooling, where an array of 40 mm fans at nearly max-RPM push air through thin channel-type heatsinks cooling large 250 W TDP server processors. The card lacks a backplate to make it easier for the adjacent card to breathe in air. Power is drawn from a 16-pin ATX 12VHPWR connector located at the tail-end of the card, rather than on its top. The card reportedly has its power limits locked to 450 W (probably through power-connector signal keying). The card was briefly available on Alibaba-owned peer-to-peer trading platform Goofish, where it was priced at RMB ¥15,000 (about USD $2,150).
34 Comments on 2-slot Air-Cooled GeForce RTX 4090 with Lateral Blower Shows Up in China
Otherwise, sick! hope the card makes some kind of bigger impact.
Funny that this card comes with the 16 pin connector in the correct place.
We know they're not a quiet as an open cooler, but for TDPs below 250W they have always been the better, quieter option overall for restrictive SFF cases. Open coolers that just recirculate their own exhaust are far louder than a blower...
I have a reference RX 470 with blower style cooler and it's bad (the GPU temp goes very high and so the fan) but not because it's blower but because the heatsink is a cheap piece of aluminum without any copper, any heatpipe or vapor chamber, it's just like a stock Core i5 CPU cooler :D
The reference GTX 780, 980 and 1080 coolers were very good.
So we need to see what's under the hood.
I've always loved the idea of pushing the GPU heat out of the case but can definitely understand there are some situations where a blower just won't cut it. Though I've always had a soft spot for them ;)
And NO, I aint paying nowhere nearz $2150 for a cheap sweatshop-made card made with bottom-barrel, knock-off parts of unknown quality.....
I will however give 'em credit for putting the power connector where it belongs, because regardless of make or model, ALL GPU mfgr's should have been doing this all along anywayz :)
Thermal defect no thanks it's why nvidia ditched the dated cooling design.
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/nvidias-new-ada-lovelace-rtx-gpu-arrives-for-designers-and-creators.299080/
I get blowers for mid and low-range cards but, for consumers, on the high-end, the noise isn’t worth it, and the performance isn’t that great either (ft02 owner). I’m sure this card performs just fine but wouldn’t be at all surprised if it exceeds 50dB while gaming
Wasted a lot of resources on dual fans that extend well past the card then guess all that was just for looks not better cooling :laugh:
nVidia don't even list the clocks on this card I'd guess very low otherwise just a thermal throttle.