The Ultra-Tiny RTX 4070 PCB: Founders Edition Tear-Down
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Date: 2023-04-13
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Comments and reviews: 14
Brian
kinda off topic here but, I am a trucker and I use a Bluetti ac200max power station to run a Lenovo legion 15ach6h laptop (3060) on my off duty time, and while that is sufficient for a 10hr break it falls short on a 34hr and I end up needing to idle for a couple of hours to recharge every 10-12hr (truck has a 20a inverter and have dual AC chargers for the power station , but I prefer not to, always want to try for that MPG bonus).
I do not have many new games as I mostly play Mudrunner/Snowrunner, or the Borderlands series era stuff, titles that all run at well over 120fps on this system maxed out but, pulling 300w load. I have began limiting FPS to 75/80 on the shooters and as low as 60 on the driving games, but I hit a point of diminishing returns where the system stops reducing its power draw. it never seems to drop much below 175w if the 3060 is active on any sort of 3d load no matter how simple.
I have noticed a few articles hint that the 40 series is supposed to be quite a bit more power efficient and I wondered if that applied to possible gains in low load efficiency as well.
I have had people tell me to just get an overall less powerful system but I would like to maintain as high a level as possible as I occasionally Use Solidworks and who knows there might be a new game someday that I actually want to buy.
I would love to build a SFF system as I am space limited (Vovlo vnl 760) but I am very concerned about shock/Vibration causing damage to expensive components), bonus kudos given if anyone knows of a case designed to keep components safe in such an environment?
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kinda off topic here but, I am a trucker and I use a Bluetti ac200max power station to run a Lenovo legion 15ach6h laptop (3060) on my off duty time, and while that is sufficient for a 10hr break it falls short on a 34hr and I end up needing to idle for a couple of hours to recharge every 10-12hr (truck has a 20a inverter and have dual AC chargers for the power station , but I prefer not to, always want to try for that MPG bonus).
I do not have many new games as I mostly play Mudrunner/Snowrunner, or the Borderlands series era stuff, titles that all run at well over 120fps on this system maxed out but, pulling 300w load. I have began limiting FPS to 75/80 on the shooters and as low as 60 on the driving games, but I hit a point of diminishing returns where the system stops reducing its power draw. it never seems to drop much below 175w if the 3060 is active on any sort of 3d load no matter how simple.
I have noticed a few articles hint that the 40 series is supposed to be quite a bit more power efficient and I wondered if that applied to possible gains in low load efficiency as well.
I have had people tell me to just get an overall less powerful system but I would like to maintain as high a level as possible as I occasionally Use Solidworks and who knows there might be a new game someday that I actually want to buy.
I would love to build a SFF system as I am space limited (Vovlo vnl 760) but I am very concerned about shock/Vibration causing damage to expensive components), bonus kudos given if anyone knows of a case designed to keep components safe in such an environment?
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Unslain
With the fan motor being housed in the fan centre. I've always questioned why designers don't have press and pop out fan designs, where if the fan dies, without even touching the chassis of the card, you can press the middle of the fan or squeeze 2 pins on either side of middle and it unhooks and slots out, you then add another fan blade (housing the motor) back into place. Power delivery through the middle. Honestly it would make the single most failure point of a card so much easier to fix. It's a concept that's ignored because they want you to buy another card or waste time RMA'ing it.
Let us self replace fans without dismantling or having to deal with tiny ribbon cables, it's 2023 not 1990s with ribbon cables.
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With the fan motor being housed in the fan centre. I've always questioned why designers don't have press and pop out fan designs, where if the fan dies, without even touching the chassis of the card, you can press the middle of the fan or squeeze 2 pins on either side of middle and it unhooks and slots out, you then add another fan blade (housing the motor) back into place. Power delivery through the middle. Honestly it would make the single most failure point of a card so much easier to fix. It's a concept that's ignored because they want you to buy another card or waste time RMA'ing it.
Let us self replace fans without dismantling or having to deal with tiny ribbon cables, it's 2023 not 1990s with ribbon cables.
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Timo
Where the screwless design came into play was on the mobile devices... There was quite a competition between Apple and Nokia on the mobile phone designing and the weight of the device was one key metric in the competition and screws weight more than glue. This is why there were fewer and fewer screws on the phones... Having followed this progression for over a decade from a very close point of view gave me pretty good view on it... All the glue made the devices next to impossible to repair. But that is the brief history of why there are fewer and fewer screws used these days. And it does look a lot better if you hide the screws properly. The need to make larger and lighter devices made the screws go away.
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Where the screwless design came into play was on the mobile devices... There was quite a competition between Apple and Nokia on the mobile phone designing and the weight of the device was one key metric in the competition and screws weight more than glue. This is why there were fewer and fewer screws on the phones... Having followed this progression for over a decade from a very close point of view gave me pretty good view on it... All the glue made the devices next to impossible to repair. But that is the brief history of why there are fewer and fewer screws used these days. And it does look a lot better if you hide the screws properly. The need to make larger and lighter devices made the screws go away.
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David
I'm impressed by how much their engineering has improved over the generations. Especially considering the reference cards they initially came out with in the earliest generations were basically just wasted chips with some of the thermals that came as a result.
I'm a little surprised to see Founder Editions at the midgrade, it's an odd choice for what everyone knew as far back as 2020 would be a skip generation. 30 series just sold too well, even without the pandemic creating a boom for anything PC, you knew 40 series was going to get skipped by the majority of the market. So a little odd.
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I'm impressed by how much their engineering has improved over the generations. Especially considering the reference cards they initially came out with in the earliest generations were basically just wasted chips with some of the thermals that came as a result.
I'm a little surprised to see Founder Editions at the midgrade, it's an odd choice for what everyone knew as far back as 2020 would be a skip generation. 30 series just sold too well, even without the pandemic creating a boom for anything PC, you knew 40 series was going to get skipped by the majority of the market. So a little odd.
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Kropa
Somewhat past 8:00 timestamp you mentioned that drawing too much power from PCI slot of a GPU is very sensitive, and I have a question about that.
Recently, I tested a FE 3080 ti for my friend. The card has two 8-pins joining into a cpecified connector, and peak power consumption was around 370-380W. During testing my mothermboard was making some clacking sounds, as well as afterwards with my EVGA 3080 when having about the same consumption of 360+ Watts. Can this be a result of a motherboard damage caused by too high PCI slot power output?
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Somewhat past 8:00 timestamp you mentioned that drawing too much power from PCI slot of a GPU is very sensitive, and I have a question about that.
Recently, I tested a FE 3080 ti for my friend. The card has two 8-pins joining into a cpecified connector, and peak power consumption was around 370-380W. During testing my mothermboard was making some clacking sounds, as well as afterwards with my EVGA 3080 when having about the same consumption of 360+ Watts. Can this be a result of a motherboard damage caused by too high PCI slot power output?
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Fixed
The 552 on the ASIC package is a qualification line bin and tray number. It's just for tracking which chip it is from that batch of qualification chips. Generally they're pulled from mass production and sent through a different set of testing than the normal automated production testing line, so when they're pulled they get a quick sharpie mark to identify them. You see these a lot on pre-qual and qual cards, some of which end up being vendor or partner review and test samples or loaners. Like yours!
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The 552 on the ASIC package is a qualification line bin and tray number. It's just for tracking which chip it is from that batch of qualification chips. Generally they're pulled from mass production and sent through a different set of testing than the normal automated production testing line, so when they're pulled they get a quick sharpie mark to identify them. You see these a lot on pre-qual and qual cards, some of which end up being vendor or partner review and test samples or loaners. Like yours!
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TechSY730
It's a shame.
The RTX 4000 series had impressive improvements in performance per volume, performance per board surface area, and performance per watt .
But this pretty much completely overshadowed by the severe decrease in performance per dollar. Too much mark up than the genuine improvements warrant.
Yes, the total max power draws of the 4090 and 4080 are kind of dumb, but the increase in total power use is matched with an even bigger increase in performance
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It's a shame.
The RTX 4000 series had impressive improvements in performance per volume, performance per board surface area, and performance per watt .
But this pretty much completely overshadowed by the severe decrease in performance per dollar. Too much mark up than the genuine improvements warrant.
Yes, the total max power draws of the 4090 and 4080 are kind of dumb, but the increase in total power use is matched with an even bigger increase in performance
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fatih
I can not believe that thing is 600 dollars msrp. It looks like a really entry level PCB with not a whole lot of VRM or cooling. They didn't even bother using high end power stages but just used OnSemi 50A driver mosfets. It's probably not gonna cause any problems but that is one of the cheapest if not the cheapest VRMs I have seen among 200watt gpus in a long time. What a greedy company really.
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I can not believe that thing is 600 dollars msrp. It looks like a really entry level PCB with not a whole lot of VRM or cooling. They didn't even bother using high end power stages but just used OnSemi 50A driver mosfets. It's probably not gonna cause any problems but that is one of the cheapest if not the cheapest VRMs I have seen among 200watt gpus in a long time. What a greedy company really.
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Justin
If you have the choice between having 2 8pin cables going to the 12V breakout cable versus 3 or 4, why would anyone choose 4? Specific PSU requirements? Seems like my corsair 1600 doesn't care. All the same rail anyway. In other words, why does modcables make a 2, 3 and 4 cable break out cable?
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If you have the choice between having 2 8pin cables going to the 12V breakout cable versus 3 or 4, why would anyone choose 4? Specific PSU requirements? Seems like my corsair 1600 doesn't care. All the same rail anyway. In other words, why does modcables make a 2, 3 and 4 cable break out cable?
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navyjax1
thanks for this, that little board and 1 gpu and they want 600 bucks, sadly, I still feel a rip off. Still not going to pay that. it was 300, i could see it, maybe 400 if there was a value added thing. its all pure rip off prices. Not a fan of Nvidia anymore, they have to re earn my trust.
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thanks for this, that little board and 1 gpu and they want 600 bucks, sadly, I still feel a rip off. Still not going to pay that. it was 300, i could see it, maybe 400 if there was a value added thing. its all pure rip off prices. Not a fan of Nvidia anymore, they have to re earn my trust.
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Seth
The power consumption is a win. The size of the card is a win and general performance is pretty good. The pricing just kills this card in the market. When you can pick up a 6700xt, 6800xt, or go used from both sides. You can get a better performing card for less money.
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The power consumption is a win. The size of the card is a win and general performance is pretty good. The pricing just kills this card in the market. When you can pick up a 6700xt, 6800xt, or go used from both sides. You can get a better performing card for less money.
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hogkill64
If they had literally added just 4 GB more of VRAM I would have bought one at this price. Nvidia doesn't want to future proof their cards though because they are scared of releasing another 1080Ti where nobody feels the need to upgrade for 8 years.
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If they had literally added just 4 GB more of VRAM I would have bought one at this price. Nvidia doesn't want to future proof their cards though because they are scared of releasing another 1080Ti where nobody feels the need to upgrade for 8 years.
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Shuckle
5:11 I don't want to see helpful screws on my electronic hardware, I want to see wasteful plastic on it - Probably Jensen
But seriously, it's hilarious to see a dedicated GPU company being allergic to screws. Like, you picked the wrong job
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5:11 I don't want to see helpful screws on my electronic hardware, I want to see wasteful plastic on it - Probably Jensen
But seriously, it's hilarious to see a dedicated GPU company being allergic to screws. Like, you picked the wrong job
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Luggage
We have to wait and guess what the 552 means, since it is hand written i would think it would be the person who inspected the chip. Could also be a batch number, mfg date, what the machine read out when they tested in watts or something.
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We have to wait and guess what the 552 means, since it is hand written i would think it would be the person who inspected the chip. Could also be a batch number, mfg date, what the machine read out when they tested in watts or something.
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