The Card

The GeForce RTX 20-series Founders Edition cards are the first graphics cards designed by NVIDIA to use a dual-fan axial-blower cooling solution. Lateral-flow coolers probably weren't cutting it, and NVIDIA probably didn't want to take AMD's route with bulky AIO liquid coolers. Dimensions of the card are 23.0 x 11.5 cm. Please note that the 8-pin PCIe power input is near the back, so you'll need a few extra centimeters for the plug and cable.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two standard DisplayPort 1.4a, one HDMI 2.0b, one DVI-D connector (no analog VGA support), and a VirtualLink connector, which is basically USB-C with DisplayPort routing and USB-PD, so a single cable can power, display, and take input from your VR HMD.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz using a single cable, or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.


The board uses one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.


The GeForce RTX 2070 does not support SLI.

Disassembly

I'm sure you've seen these special "NVIDIA" screws before. I thought I had the right tool for them..bummer, they're smaller now, and the tools for previous cards won't work.


Disassembling the card is more difficult than ever. In order to get the PCB out, you have to remove the backplate first, remove all the screws on the backside of the card, and then carefully lift up the cooler. Now, you'll be stuck with the power connector sitting between the baseplate and the rest of the cooler. Near the front of the cooling assembly are two screws that have to be removed. Be very careful, it's super easy to strip those screws as they're made from a soft metal.

With the screws gone, the card will fall apart into four pieces: fan assembly, heatsink, black metal baseplate, and the PCB itself.

The next step requires you to remove the screws that hold the flat ribbon cable and power connector in place before carefully removing the flat ribbon cable glued to the baseplate.

Overall, this is the most complicated VGA card disassembly I've ever seen—be careful.


NVIDIA's thermal solution uses four heatpipes and a copper plate to soak up the heat from the GPU.


The black metal baseplate provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. It also has a few thermal pads to help with VRM cooling.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.