Most believe the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Ti graphics card has been scrapped, but if it survives, we can look forward to at least one especially cool feature.
The long-rumored and recently rumored to be canned Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti might have had an interesting cooler design, according to Goofish user ‘Hayaka,’ who became infamous for the ridiculously high price tag they attached to an alleged prototype of the graphics card.
Despite the infamy, Hayaka is still sharing, recently posting more photos of the prototype, giving us a clear look at the two fans on either side of the card, as well as a possible fan between the fins of the heatsink.
What purpose would this extra fan serve? Is it capable of offering additional cooling to such a powerful graphics card? Considering how much power the 4090 Ti would have to devour to sustain itself, you can understand why Nvidia would be tempted to try out more interesting cooler setups to increase ventilation.
This cooling system is potentially game-changing if true
While I believe it’s in the best interest of Nivida to can the RTX 4090 Ti, as the baseline RTX 4090 – considered the best graphics card on the market – is doing quite well in sales numbers, this unusual cooler design should be considered for future graphics cards as power consumption will only increase with each new generation.
Though we have no real way of knowing just how effective this additional fan within the heatsink fins would be, it could end up being handy for the anticipated 5000 series of Nvidia graphics cards. And since the 4090 Ti would possibly be the perfect segway into the next-gen cards, this sets up a golden opportunity to test out this and other cooler designs.
Other than performance, the card's aesthetics are also unusual. It does look a bit bulky and awkward, but with enough experimentation and tweaking it could end up giving gaming PCs the unique visual flair custom builds are currently lacking.
And even if this particular design turns out to be a bust, there’s a real need for graphics cards to have better cooling systems, as overheating is a common issue for the high-end 4000-series cards. And as we’ve seen already with the RTX 4090, cables melting and fires are a serious threat.
