2-slot Air-Cooled GeForce RTX 4090 with Lateral Blower Shows Up in China

[btarunr]

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).



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[Solaris17]

array of 40 mm fans at nearly max-RPM push air through thin channel-type heatsinks cooling large 250 W TDP server processors

While DC fans are quiet loud "max RPM" is not really the reason. these fans have massive fin angles and the server chassis themselves also generate noise through the ducting. The bearings are also not designed for quiet like most consumer stuff.

Otherwise, sick! hope the card makes some kind of bigger impact.

 

[john_]

An undervolted RTX 4090 with a much lower TGP and no way to bypass that TGP limit, could easily be sold as an RTX 4080 Ti from Nvidia and probably easily be cooled by 2 slot cooling solutions. I think there are videos out there showing that Ada is a very power efficient architecture.

Funny that this card comes with the 16 pin connector in the correct place.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Perfect for those playing the flight sim DCS?

 

[Chrispy_]

I do wish there were more blowers in the consumer GPU market.

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...

 

[JAB Creations]

Exceptionally likely a marketing stunt; Nvidia is well known to do guerilla marketing and partake in astroturfing, it's a big part in how they tricked fanboys in to doing their dirty psychology on forums for them.

 

[Dristun]

Exceptionally likely a marketing stunt; Nvidia is well known to do guerilla marketing and partake in astroturfing, it's a big part in how they tricked fanboys in to doing their dirty psychology on forums for them.

Sir, you took one too many of those red pills today, time to ease up on em!

 

[Tek-Check]

Didn't the US government introduce a ban on exporting high technology goods? Are GPUs exempt?

 

[claes]

Yes and yes, as are many other common electronics

 

[AusWolf]

Perfect for those playing the flight sim DCS?

You don't need Flight Sim. This card is Flight Sim.

 

[tfdsaf]

The 4090rtx could realistically be a 2 slot card, while it can consume 400W, in most games it floats around 350W. Now it will be hotter than the current models, but still within normal operating parameters.

 

[Bet0n]

I like blower style coolers if they're done right. Copper contact points, vapor chamber, good heatsink.
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
The reference GTX 780, 980 and 1080 coolers were very good.
So we need to see what's under the hood.

 

[metalslaw]

So it can be done.... A card that isn't stupidly wide, and has the power connector on the end.

 

[_JP_]

While DC fans are quiet loud "max RPM" is not really the reason. these fans have massive fin angles and the server chassis themselves also generate noise through the ducting. The bearings are also not designed for quiet like most consumer stuff.

Otherwise, sick! hope the card makes some kind of bigger impact.

This is very true. Another example would be Mac Pros from mid-2000s that had 120mm fans with quiet bearings, but they were high-RPM capable and one instance where you'd stop having a relatively quiet workstation and what sounded more like an airliner taking off, would be a kernel panic.

 

[Fouquin]

This smells like a PCPartner card. They had a reasonable blower design for the 30 series as well. Most of these blower cards are all based on the same general layout and feature similar components, sort of like a reference card they're approved by NVIDIA. The 3090 blowers were very short lived (NVIDIA pulled the plug a few weeks after launch) but the 3080 and some 3080 Ti variants were sold in decent quantities and are shockingly not that bad. One of the things you have to consider is that what we have come to expect from a GPU is extended boost clocks, and the pursuit of achieving and sustaining the upper end of these extended boost clocks is why we have gigantic 3-4 slot monstrosities that have higher and higher power limits. Remember that the 4090 has an official boost clock target of only 2520MHz, not the ~2.8GHz that the cards will push to when given a car radiator for cooling. What these blower designs do is simply follow the stock VF curve, not sustain full boost, fall back to somewhere in the middle above the base clock but not at peak boost, and run consistently at a balance point between thermals and power. Because while the usual 4090 might need 450-500W to sustain 2.8-3GHz, it likely only needs 250-275W to sustain 2.3-2.4GHz and that is exactly the wattage range that these blower cooler designs can handle AND still be above the advertised base clock.

 

[freeagent]

This wont be a quiet card considering its target audience..

 

[Vya Domus]

This wont be a quiet card considering its target audience..

The target audience for this is professional/software development people, they don't really care if it's quiet or not.

 

[AsRock]

Yeah oky doky and no thanks.

 

[Tropick]

I like blower style coolers if they're done right. Copper contact points, vapor chamber, good heatsink.
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
The reference GTX 780, 980 and 1080 coolers were very good.
So we need to see what's under the hood.

Same here, the quality of blower coolers is really dependent on how much thought goes into their design. I used to have a reference GTX 980Ti and towards the end of its life I got the guts to do a substrate epoxy/liquid metal repaste and those copper vapor chambers get really effective if you can dump heat into them quickly enough. Under gaming load at 1080p with a fairly benign fan curve I remember it would max out at around 70-75c. The noise was negligible and my case temps were near ambient.
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

 

[sepheronx]

I would buy this, at a reasonable price mind you. But I always liked the blower coolers.

 

[Scrizz]

I could totally go for a card like this.

 

[PLAfiller]

The right case for blower style cards....the 90 degree mount a.k.a Silverstone and some cheap options like Sharkoon REV300. Gonna make it real good for the temps with these.

 

[bonehead123]

Is the spywarez/backdoorz/rootkitz etc included in that price, or do we have to pay extra for those "features" hehehe

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

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Thermal defect no thanks it's why nvidia ditched the dated cooling design.

 

[Solaris17]

Hi,
Thermal defect no thanks it's why nvidia ditched the dated cooling design.

No they didnt. They literally use them on the Ada RTX6000 which used the entire die.

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