Today we don’t even have a date for the presentation of future NVIDIA graphics cards, some say certain dates and others say others. The little we know is that the only thing they have finished is the chip and they are currently creating the rest of the various standard models of the graphics card. The last thing that happened? One of the RTX 40 Founders Edition will have three fans. What until now was unprecedented in models sold directly by the company.
Graphics cards will increase their power consumption, today should not surprise you since there is the new 12+4 pin PCIe connector with the capacity to provide up to 600W of power. If we add to this that one of the reference models uses not one, but two of these connectors. So the next question comes to mind: how do you plan to refrigerate them? So far, the near 500W RTX 3090 Ti has required no design changes, however with the promise of graphics for gaming with over half a kilowatt of power consumption, one must adopt new approaches.
Will we see an RTX 40 Founders Edition with three fans?
For now, only one of NVIDIA’s next-gen graphics chips, the AD102, will be designed to require the new connector. Which literally doubles the power they use compared to current graphics cards. If we rule out, of course, the RTX 3090 Ti. We must assume that increased energy consumption also means more heat output. That means the fans have to move a lot more airflow.
It is therefore necessary to completely change the cooling system and, consequently, the configuration of the fans.
- Place larger fans, which increases the noise generated by the graphics card when operating at near-maximum performance rates.
- Running the fans at a higher speed, but not adding an extra one, which also generates a lot of noise.
- Add additional fans, which add airflow to the existing ones. To be the most elegant solution in terms of noise pollution.
The fact that NVIDIA is considering an RTX 40 Founders Edition with three fans should come as no surprise. After all, it’s a solution that most graphics card manufacturers use in many of their variants with more than satisfactory results. Although at the moment we do not know in which model we will see this solution applied, everything points to what would become the most advanced model of all.
A three-fan setup could also mean that the graphics cards become four slots. Which means the top-end model could be even bigger than the RTX 3090 and its Ti version.
