Packaging

RTX 4090 Founders Edition comes in a huge flip-open package.


The card sits neatly in the center, underneath the card you'll find documentation and the PCIe adapter cable.

The Card

NVIDIA's Founders Edition looks stunning—it could be an Apple product. NVIDIA has made small improvements to the design language, making it an even cleaner design than what we saw on GeForce 30 Series. As with Ampere, the card is designed for airflow to go through the card—that's why there's two fans. One sucks in cool air from the bottom, is pushed through the card and then blown out towards the case top on the other side.


Comparison against the GeForce 30 Series.


From left to right: GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3090, RTX 4090.


Compared against AMD's recent offerings it becomes clear how large this card really is.


Dimensions of the card are 31.0 x 14.0 cm, and it weighs 2181 g.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4a ports and one HDMI 2.1a (same as Ampere).

NVIDIA introduces the concept of dual NVDEC and NVENC Codecs with the Ada architecture. This means there are now two independent sets of hardware-accelerators; so you can encode and decode two streams of video in parallel, or one stream at double the FPS rate. The new 8th Gen NVENC now accelerates AV1 encoding, besides HEVC. You also get an "optical flow accelerator" unit that is able to calculate intermediate frames for videos, to smooth playback. The same hardware unit is used for frame generation in DLSS 3.


The card uses the new 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR connector, which is rated for up to 600 W of power draw. An adapter cable from 4x PCIe 8-pin is included, you can also run the card with just three 8-pins. The default power limit is 450 W, so it'll be perfectly fine and within spec (even with one 8-pin left unconnected). At the top of the 16-pin connector there's four "sense" pins, which signal to the graphics card how many power cables are connected, so the card can adjust power limits automatically.


The tail end of the card has a small lid that covers the mounting holes for a support rail, used in certain workstation form-factors such as the x86 Mac Pro.

Teardown

Taking the RTX 4090 Founders Edition apart isn't much different to previous Founders Edition cards and can be done in a few minutes, if you know what you're doing.


First pop off the top cover with the "RTX 4090" text on it. To do that carefully lift it up from the PCIe slot cover side, it's attached magnetically.


The metal plate is a really nice design, I love the idea with the magnets. Everything stays in place during normal use, yet it's easy to disassemble the RTX 4090—and no glue is used.


Next, remove four Philips screws and four Torx screws.


This is like the classic "backplate", it has a few thermal pads to soak up (a little bit of) heat from the card underneath.


Now you can remove the six Torx screws on the slot cover, and one more screw near the top right in the 2nd picture, that holds the slot cover in place.


We've seen these before, flip up the flat-ribbon connector carefully (I prefer to use my fingers rather than pliers), and carefully pull out the flat-ribbon cable. The other connector, with the silvery cover requires you to push the cover sideways and then you can lift the black plastic connector upwards. More info here.


This is a beast of a cooler—there's tons of thermal pads to provide cooling not only for the GPU, but also the VRM and memory chips.


Please note how NVIDIA cut grooves into the heatsink for the memory pads—it's the first time that I see such an approach. I think it will definitely help improve contact, especially in situations where the thermal pad might be somewhat too thin or the mounting is slightly suboptimal.


NVIDIA uses six fat heatpipes and a vapor-chamber plate to move heat away from the GPU quickly.