Monday, June 12th 2023
GIGABYTE RTX 4090 WindForce V2 Unveiled, with Unique Tail-ended Power Connector
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 WindForce V2 may not be the company's most premium RTX 4090 custom-design graphics card, but it has arguably the best power connector design. Almost every custom RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 comes with a design where in the PCB is half or two-thirds the length of the card, and the remainder of the length is dedicated to the cooling solution, where the heatsink can extend along the thickness of the card. In case of the RTX 4090 WindForce V2, this extended portion of the cooler is recessed by half, exposing the tail end of the PCB. The 16-pin 12VHPWR power input is pointed toward the tail-end, rather than toward the top of the card.
This makes cabling very convenient, as it no longer needs to bend nearly 180° as it emerges from the back of your motherboard tray. The power cable goes straight into the connector with no bending up to a roughly 8 cm length, before making a 90° turn to the back of your motherboard tray, reducing mechanical strain on the connector. Even the NVIDIA-designed adapter included with the card (the one that converts 4x 8-pin to a 12VHPWR), should look neater. It's likely that as a WindForce-series product, this card offers the lowest tier of factory overclocks by GIGABYTE. You still get dual-BIOS, which lets you toggle between this factory-OC, and a Silent BIOS that runs the card at reference speeds, with tighter fan tuning. The selling point, however, is its unique power connector design.
Sources:
harukaze5719 (Twitter), VideoCardz
This makes cabling very convenient, as it no longer needs to bend nearly 180° as it emerges from the back of your motherboard tray. The power cable goes straight into the connector with no bending up to a roughly 8 cm length, before making a 90° turn to the back of your motherboard tray, reducing mechanical strain on the connector. Even the NVIDIA-designed adapter included with the card (the one that converts 4x 8-pin to a 12VHPWR), should look neater. It's likely that as a WindForce-series product, this card offers the lowest tier of factory overclocks by GIGABYTE. You still get dual-BIOS, which lets you toggle between this factory-OC, and a Silent BIOS that runs the card at reference speeds, with tighter fan tuning. The selling point, however, is its unique power connector design.
53 Comments on GIGABYTE RTX 4090 WindForce V2 Unveiled, with Unique Tail-ended Power Connector
This passthrough had to (should?) be designed with a fair amount of sculpting based upon knowledge air flow will immediately be impeded by impact with the cable and connector. Meaning I'm fairly sure that fan noise and vibration tuning informed the layout. It's also important to note this occurs at the first entry point for cool outside air. A lot of question marks here to be sure could prove... "It shows what's wrong with modern day gaming in general: form over function."
I won't comment too much on the price/resolution aspect, since imo the 4090 is only wearing a "gaming" skin, I've seen lots of high profile motion/3D designer buying those GPUs to make work for big clients...and not caring for gaming at all. (And people with a large disposable income are always outliers anyway :D)
So you tell me: how can a thicker PCB have so much flex compared to a thinner one in that specific area of the GPU?
if too hot feel like it can be problematic
Gigabyte flexed more because the Asus had this pillar standoff on top of the PCB that provided reinforcement in the opposite direction.
And yeah of course gigabyte was probably not 2 Oz, they skimped on that promise. One could expect if the motherboards are being marketed as 2 Oz, the GPU will employ the same principle.
I have gigabyte products and i knew about this on their subreddit (were it's mostly complains of all sorts, warranty especially), hardly news. Happens from time to time, mostly pre build and i bet it is just because of.... being on prebuilds.
But hey it's all about cutting corners ( pun intended ) and pitching it as an advance.
If Gigabyte want to fix some real issues on their GPU's then how about they design a real support bracket and start to honour their warranties ?
Oh yeah that won't happen , they would have to stop cutting corners for that.
I know he wasn't the first, he just jumped on the drama as usual. He is the ambulance chaser guy.
Rossman isn't a pc tech guy, he just reports on bad consumer practices for his right to repair cause. For him i believe the Gigabyte RMA can be news. For someone in the business it can't be.
Rossman also said it was mostly from prebuilds, but i guess that was lost in the drama.
Like with Asus and many other dramas recently there is a story, but the drama is overblown (the Gigabyte PSU and that case that caught fire were the exception), out of context, and clickbait.
Aorus and matrix look pretty much the same to me with the obvious design differences.
V2 PCB is as big as the inside of the asus frame. SO it could lead to some really tiny 4090 with dual fan and such.