Blower-type GeForce RTX 4090 card on Gigabyte PCB
The mysterious RTX 4090 with no labels or marking now available in Asia, will not be the only RTX 4090 with such a cooling design.
GeForce RTX 4090 with blower-type cooler, Source: MEGAsizeGPU
Blower-type cooling solutions for gaming GPUs should be a thing of a past. However, given the price difference between GeForce gaming and RTX workstation solutions, many researchers, or people who simply need more compute power would still choose gaming GPUs instead. NVIDIA is actively making life for such people harder, by limiting the functionality of gaming cards or simply not allowing board partners to make blower designs. Such designs are much easier to use in clusters.
GeForce RTX 4090 with blower-type cooler, Source: MEGAsizeGPU
It looks like Gigabyte might also have their blower fan on RTX 4090 design. A picture spotted by MEGAsizeGPU shows an RTX 4090 board design, likely borrowed from RTX 4090 WindForce model. It is a dual-slot blower fan design. Not only that, the leaker also has full specs of this card, confirming that this is indeed the RTX 4090 GPU with 450W TGP and one 16-pin power connector.
RTX 4090 card using Gigabyte PCB, Source: MEGAsizeGPU
The card ships with NVIDIA reference clocks and there is no reason to expect this card to work well with power target higher than 450W, although it comes with a quad 8-pin to 16-pin adapter.
Gigabyte’s RTX 4090 with blower fan may not be an official design, though. As long as the card is using a reference PCB design, some companies might be simply selling their custom cooling designs for existing models without the involvement of the board supplying company. This would explain why the label on the PCB suggests this is a WindForce card, although it clearly is not.
RTX 4090 card using Gigabyte PCB, Source: MEGAsizeGPU
Source: MEGAsizeGPU
