Zotac GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO Unboxing

Zotac GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO represents the company's fastest air-cooled, factory-overclocked RTX 4090 product. It uses the company's latest design scheme, which focuses on aerodynamics (in design, not in heat-dissipation). The parallelogram-shaped design of Zotac's RTX 30-series makes way for a somewhat ovioid one. The curvy design elements extend even to the RGB lighting setup, and other passive design accents on the card. Zotac also introduced the 3rd generation of its IceStorm high-end cooling solution with this card, and plenty of enthusiast features.


The AMP Extreme AIRO comes in a 2-layer packaging like most other cards. The thinner paperboard outer layer has true-color graphics with a holographic film. This layer opens up like an envelope to reveal the inner layer.


The hard cardboard inner layer opens up like an envelope, just like the outer one, You're greeted with a metallic ziploc pouch with documentation inside. The card and its accessories are lodged in foam inserts.


Contents include a 3-pin 5 V addressable-RGB cable, A reinforcement bracket, and the NVIDIA-designed adapter that converts four 8-pin PCIe power connectors to a 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR. The ARGB cable connects to the card on one end with a proprietary connector, and actually puts out an ARGB header. The idea here is you can make the graphics card control the rest of your RGB setup using the Zotac Firestorm software.


The RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO has a slick, many-tone silver-metallic appearance that looks futuristic, even with the bright RGB lighting. The shroud only minimally covers up the sides, from where much of the hot air is exhausted. The PCB is about two-thirds the length of the card, so air from the third fan flows through the heatsink, and out large vents on the backplate. ARGB lighting elements line the top of the card, and parts of the backplate, besides the Zotac Gaming logo.


Unlike most other custom-design RTX 4090 cards we've seen, the AMP Extreme AIRO is only minimally thicker than 3 slots. Display outputs include three DisplayPorts and an HDMI. Much like the previous-gen RTX 30-series AMP HOLO, there's some dead-space between the tail-end of the heatsink and the cooler-shroud, though not as much, and it's opened up.


The card draws power from a 12+4 pin 12VHPWR connector. There's a note cautioning against improper power supply. Next to the power connector is an SMD button. This lets you select between the two BIOS ROMs, but isn't implemented in the same way as the Colorful iGame Vulcan—it isn't a push-type mechanical selector, but rather a button that triggers the card to switch to a different ROM via software. We're not sure how this helps if one of the BIOSes is unusable, won't POST, and you need to select the next one. We'll find out more in our testing.


The Zotac AMP Extreme AIRO is among the lighter RTX 4090 custom-design cards we have, weighing 2.044 kg. It measures 35.5 cm in length, making it as long as the ASUS ROG Strix.


The card is a fair bit longer than the NVIDIA Founders Edition, and only slightly thicker than 3 slots.