Images of a mysterious custom design of the GeForce RTX 4090 (test) have appeared in China, which is the first graphics card of the Ada Lovelace architecture to use a blower cooler. The manufacturer of the model is unknown.
Blower coolers are no longer trendy
Not only the brute Founders Editions of the two previously released GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards, but especially the vast majority of custom designs of the GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 (test) are one thing above all: very large. If you are looking for a compact dual-slot graphics card, you cannot avoid a water-cooled model from Ada Lovelace, as a look at the price comparison reveals. And the range of graphics cards that cover a maximum of three PCIe slots with their heat sinks is also manageable. On the one hand, this may be pleasing due to the associated high cooling performance at a comparatively low volume, but on the other hand it causes complications if the necessary space is simply not available, for example in ITX cases or workstation PCs with several graphics cards.
In the past, the notorious blower cards with dual-slot heat sinks and a single radial fan provided a remedy – just the configuration that was common in the reference designs before Nvidia Turing and AMD RDNA 2. However, the power consumption of the top models, which has risen sharply in recent years, has gradually pushed the blower coolers, which were already discredited for their immense volume, out of the high-end sector. At the start of the GeForce RTX 3090 (test) around two years ago, only three blower cards from Gigabyte, Asus and MSI were presented before the models quietly and secretly disappeared from the market a few months later – presumably due to pressure from Nvidia.
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It is therefore not surprising that the major board partners for the GeForce RTX 4090 dispensed with the corresponding dual-slot designs with radial fans, especially since rumors at the beginning of the year were still assuming 450, 600 or even 900 watts for the Ada Lovelace top model – that the In the end, the GeForce RTX 4090 would be more economical than the GeForce RTX 3090 and especially the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (test), almost nobody expected that a few months ago.
The first Ada Lovelace graphics card with radial fan
In any case, an unknown manufacturer saw potential for a GeForce RTX 4090 with a blower cooler, which the Twitter user @Zed__Wang aka MEGAsizeGPU first became aware of in early November 2022. VideoCardz attributed the custom design, which only existed on render images at the time, to the Chinese manufacturer Manli – which, for example, is also responsible for the GeForce RTX 4090 Gallardo with spirit level – which Manli later denied.
November specifications of the GeForce RTX 4090 with blower cooler (Image: VideoCardz)
Now, however, photos of the mysterious blower design have also surfaced, which appears to have reached Chinese retailers, where the graphics card is selling for 15,000 CNY, which is the equivalent of around 2,040 euros. Neither the lettering on the housing of the blower cooler with radial fan nor the lettering on the side of the graphics card refer to its manufacturer and a look at the back of the PCB does not help in this regard either.
GeForce RTX 4090 with blower cooler (Image: VideoCardz)
Other the custom design with a 16-pin 12VHWPR connection is unobtrusive, although only a breakout cable to three classic 8-pin power plugs is included as an adapter, whereas RTX 4090 graphics cards usually come with adapters to four 8-pin plugs . The power consumption is thus limited to 450 watts or 525 (516) watts including the power supply via the PCIe slot. The data sheet, on the other hand, speaks of a maximum GPU temperature of 90 degrees, but does not go into the expected fan speed or volume.
That the only GeForce RTX 4090 with a blower so far -Coolers will also find their way to Europe after the market launch in China, can be doubted, but is not impossible. However, the graphics card has at least FCC and CE markings.