If you want to upgrade soon to a Founders Edition NVIDIA RTX 4090 or 4090 Ti, you better make sure that your case has room for either of them - because they're shaping up to be quite massive.
nvidia rtx 4090 ti
As reported by WCCFTech, leaked renders of NVIDIA's new BFGPUs based on the Ada Lovelace architecture prominently feature 3-slot Founders Edition coolers. This is more or less similar to what the previous-generation RTX 3090 and 3090 Ti had, but the power draw/heat/cooling discussion is the most important here, still.
The leaked renders were shared by YouTuber Moore's Law Is Dead, who's earned a reputation for leaking relatively accurate details about upcoming graphics cards. His insider information was particularly instrumental in Intel's desktop Arc GPUs for example. But now, he turned his focus on NVIDIA's RTX 40 series.
Here's the video he uploaded discussing the 3-slot Founders coolers for the RTX 4090 and RTX 4090 Ti, whose title also presents a rather interesting question (which we'll go back to in a bit):
As you can see in the video's title, Moore's Law Is Dead also asked whether the 3-slot Founders Edition coolers were even enough to cool the 4090 and 4090 Ti. That's because these two flagship cards have long been described as incredibly power-hungry - even more so than their predecessors from the RTX 30 series. There seems to be no figures for the 4090 Ti's power draw, but the 4090 is rumored to suck out as much as 600 watts of power from the wall alone (via Tom's Hardware).
NVIDIA has yet to reveal when the RTX 4090 and RTX 4090 Ti will be available. There's no exact release date or even vague release window so far, so PC gaming enthusiasts will just have to wait - and perhaps upgrade their PSUs and cases if they want to run any of these two BFGPUs.
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On The Case Of 3-Slot Founders Coolers Being 'Enough'
Now, Moore's Law Is Dead's question about whether the 3-slot Founders Edition coolers on the 4090 and 4090 Ti are enough is a legitimate one. A max power draw of 600 watts is insane to think about for even a single flagship GPU, and the 4090 isn't even the actual flagship for NVIDIA's RTX 40 series.
Many industry analysts that in order to cool a 600w card, you'll need 4 GPU slots. Four. 3 slots is already way too big even for the most spacious cases and sturdiest motherboard PCIe slots. But four? Some folks might think that the number is pushing things way too hard.
A 3-slot cooler, argues the YouTuber, would need to have an incredibly high build quality in order to cool a 600w RTX 4090 - let alone a 4090 Ti. And he would be right, considering how the Founders Edition 3090 consumed almost two times less power but the cooler was barely able to scrape by, maintaining just under 70 degrees in a Furmark test as seen in this video:
Take note that the test was also done in an open test bed, and not in a closed case environment which more people would have.
At the end of the day, one thing is for certain: you won't be paying for just the new NVIDIA GPUs this time if you want to upgrade. So you better get to saving, and fast.
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This article is posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce
