NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Pictured?

[Chrispy_]

That "poorly designed" cooler kept the 250W RTX 2080S cool and quiet though, didn't it?
And the 2060FE was actually as good as AIB cards.
All this while being a 2-slot card and looking so much better than anything else on the market.

I think you misunderstand me. The FE coolers were adequate and kept the cards quiet enough and cool enough - I had no complaints with mine other than a driver issue (well, decision by Nvidia really) that enforced a minimum fan speed of about 60% of typical full load speed which was far too much and made the card clearly audible at all times. 1200RPM idle is ridiculous for a 160W card that never even reached 2000rpm for me during an OCCT burn test. Other FE cards have an even more ridiculous 1500rpm idle which is borderline obnoxious if you don't have game sounds to cover up the GPU noise.

Watch some teardowns of the FE coolers (gamersnexus were particularly vocal about the FE cooler, though by no means the only ones moaning about them) if you want to see what I mean about poorly-designed. They are clearly very expensive to produce with a lot of manual labour required in addition to the over-complex design. They're sort of 'bodged' together with far too many component parts that show all the hallmarks of a company that is inexperienced in making an open cooler.

Third party cards were usually cooler and quieter, all whilst having cheaper-to-produce, simpler cooler designs on them and using lower-binned, hotter-running silicon. I'm not going to deny that the FE cards were the best-looking on the market though. I think that's one of the reasons I bought one

 

[EarthDog]

Third party cards were usually cooler and quieter, all whilst having cheaper-to-produce, simpler cooler designs on them and using lower-binned, hotter-running silicon.

It's like, how it has always been...........AIB cards are cooler and quieter. Shocking ! I think all people are saying is that they are better and less noisy than the blower style coolers.

Outside of that, I don't about lower-binned silcon...as far as I could see, most AIB cards overclocked father than the FE....

ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 Super STRIX OC Review

The factory-overclocked ASUS RTX 2080 Super STRIX OC is the company's flagship RTX 2080 Super. It comes with a powerful 10+2 phase VRM and large triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution. Thanks to the dual-BIOS capability, you are free to pick between excellent temperatures or excellent noise.

www.techpowerup.com

ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Matrix 11 GB Review

The ASUS RTX 2080 Ti Matrix is the world's first graphics card with fully integrated watercooling. ASUS has managed the seemingly impossible and crammed waterblock, pump, and radiator into a triple-slot graphics card. The Matrix is also highly overclocked, making it the fastest RTX 2080 Ti we...

www.techpowerup.com

The first two I looked at ^^. Clearly not all are that way, but this small sample shows card partner cards close or higher than the FEs.

 

[Vario]

This cools really well but I don't think we'd ever see any manufacturer sell a card looking like this

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't about lower-binned silcon...as far as I could see, most AIB cards overclocked father than the FE....

Binning on Nvidia cards is really easy to see, the die is actually stamped with the bin. Take a 2070 for example.

TU-106-400A-A1 is the FE, top bin. It was sold to some vendors at a premium for their top-tier factory overclocks, too.
TU-106-400-A1 is the standard 2070, that most 3rd party boards near the MSRP used.

The reason the FE didn't overclock as well was down to Nvidia strictly enforcing their own recommended power limit. The A-die let them get away with smaller, sexier coolers because they were higher-yield, more efficient silicon. 3rd party vendors had two options - buy the cheaper chip and throw the savings at beefier cooling to handle the higher voltages required for the non-A die, or buy the A-dies at a premium, go bonkers on the VRMs and cooling, and sell it as a top-tier card with a hefty overclock.

I believe that yields have improved since Turing's launch and there are now no "A dies" because all of them are considered good enough quality.

 

[EarthDog]

Binning on Nvidia cards is really easy to see, the die is actually stamped with the bin. Take a 2070 for example.

TU-106-400A-A1 is the FE, top bin. It was sold to some vendors at a premium for their top-tier factory overclocks, too.
TU-106-400-A1 is the standard 2070, that most 3rd party boards near the MSRP used.

The reason the FE didn't overclock as well was down to Nvidia strictly enforcing their own recommended power limit. The A-die let them get away with smaller, sexier coolers because they were higher-yield, more efficient silicon. 3rd party vendors had two options - buy the cheaper chip and throw the savings at beefier cooling to handle the higher voltages required for the non-A die, or buy the A-dies at a premium, go bonkers on the VRMs and cooling, and sell it as a top-tier card with a hefty overclock.

I believe that yields have improved since Turing's launch and there are now no "A dies" because all of them are considered good enough quality.

i recall that, yes... but I dont remember it paying off in actual clocks. The differences seemed negligible.

 

[Chrispy_]

i recall that, yes... but I dont remember it paying off in actual clocks. The differences seemed negligible.

Well vendors would do their own binning too. So the A die were likely used for the Kingpin and FTW variants, but EVGA would have bulk-purchased loads of non-A silicon and would likely sub-bin that themselves to put the better silicon in the SSC Ultra and the worse silicon in the stock SC models.

I'm sure all vendors offering a range of factory overclocked models of increasingly aggressive clocks would have sub-binned the non-A dies too, so the fact that some non-A dies went into agressively-clocked cards is no surprise.

The other thing to remember is that binning is normally done by voltage - and one thing us overclockers have learned is that leaky/inefficient/higher-voltage silicon often overclocks better - provided you can cool it. Back when ASIC quality was exposed to GPU-Z, we'd often see the highest-clocking cards with ASIC quality of under 75% whilst the incredible undervolting champions were only found above 85%. So binning for voltage is definitely not the same as binning for clocks.

 

[EarthDog]

Details.

as far as I could see, most AIB cards overclocked father than the FE....

 

[Chrispy_]

Details.

Well you're making the incorrect assumption that Nvidia is binning for clockspeed; It wasn't. It was binning for efficiency and one thing us overclockers have learned is that leaky/inefficient/higher-voltage silicon often overclocks better - provided you can cool it.

Back when ASIC quality was exposed to GPU-Z, we'd often see the highest-clocking cards with ASIC quality of under 75% whilst the incredible undervolting champions were only found above 85%. So binning for voltage is definitely not the same as binning for clocks.

 

[EarthDog]

Sorry.. of course there is more to it than clocks! I didn't feel I needed to mention that.

 

[Hugis]

fresh pictures of the heatsink these really do look legit now

Edit : source https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/h07cxn

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

from the pics i've seen it looks crazy ( in a good way )
buuuut i would prefer a fan grill to stop parts falling in it, obviously that would impede the airflow
just my 2 cents

bwahaha i was thinking of the other cooler

 

[Animalpak]

Sooo uhmm according to the dimensions of the card, water cooling it will be convenient since the waterblock will be the same dimension of the card... Less material = cheap ... NICE !

 

[RH92]

Ok given this leak this is probably whats going on imo :

 

[Chrispy_]

Aw shucks, that's a stupid-ass design.
Seriously, having the passively-cooled chunk of fins in the middle walled off like that ruins the whole thing. Not only does it remove those fins from active cooling duty, it also completely stifles the front fan.

This is not a high-TDP design - it's 200W max and the aesthetics really are all that Nvidia care about with this because cooling potential is roughtly halved by that single decision to wall off the central fins.

Dumb AF, avoid!

At least it confirms where the power connectors are going to go at last - and yes, there will be stupid wires to the PCB like on the 2060FE again (sigh...)

 

[Valantar]

Aw shucks, that's a stupid-ass design.
Seriously, having the passively-cooled chunk of fins in the middle walled off like that ruins the whole thing. Not only does it remove those fins from active cooling duty, it also completely stifles the front fan.

This is not a high-TDP design - it's 200W max and the aesthetics really are all that Nvidia care about with this because cooling potential is roughtly halved by that single decision to wall off the central fins.

Dumb AF, avoid!

At least it confirms where the power connectors are going to go at last - and yes, there will be stupid wires to the PCB like on the 2060FE again (sigh...)

View attachment 158466

Are you sure that isn't just a cut-out for the sides of the fan, like around the other fan? No fins on the top or bottom there after all. I'm starting to wonder if the cut-out in the passive fin stack is for an angled 8-pin connector or something.

Other than that, I entirely agree that the walled-off fins are a really dumb move. Seems to be motivated entirely by price, as it lets them use a simple aluminium extrusion for this part of the fin stack, but ... wow, it's so stupid. Wasted potential for sure.

 

[Chrispy_]

Are you sure that isn't just a cut-out for the sides of the fan, like around the other fan? No fins on the top or bottom there after all. I'm starting to wonder if the cut-out in the passive fin stack is for an angled 8-pin connector or something.

we're both wrong.
I'm wrong because if you go back to the first set of images, there's no cutout in the shroud there for power connectors. The thing I circled is probably just the fan blade clearance you mentioned.
You're wrong about the cutout in the passive fin stack, it's far too narrow, but you did make me take a closer look and it yielded results:

To me, those look like thick power delivery wires covered in black heatshrink. This is where the wired PCIe connectors meet the PCB I guess, which means the wires probably run under the fan hub and have a cutout on the end of the shroud, which hasn't been photographed yet and is likely the only place left for the PCIe connectors to be hiding.

 

[r.h.p]

This cools really well but I don't think we'd ever see any manufacturer sell a card looking like this
View attachment 158286

actually this is what my old vega 64 needs ...

 

[Caring1]

Ok given this leak this is probably whats going on imo :

View attachment 158451

Those look like injection molded plastic mock ups.

 

[BoboOOZ]

This cools really well but I don't think we'd ever see any manufacturer sell a card looking like this
View attachment 158286

They could, they would just have to include a pci riser and a way to adapt the io part.

IMO they should do this, since modern GPU's are way more power-hungry than modern CPUs. Either this, or come with more water-cooled models.

 

[Chrispy_]

Those look like injection molded plastic mock ups.

Looks 100% like machined metal to me.

Everything from the paint scratches showing up as lighter material below, to the minor damage resulting in permanently bent metal where plastic would either spring back or snap off. Injection moulded is extremely unlikely - that requires extremely expensive investment dies to be made, not something that's ever done for prototyping. They'd probably 3D Print stuff for prototyping now, and the stuff we've seen so far is far too smooth to be 3D printed, even on the highest-end printer available.

 

[Valantar]

Looks 100% like machined metal to me.

Everything from the paint scratches showing up as lighter material below, to the minor damage resulting in permanently bent metal where plastic would either spring back or snap off. Injection moulded is extremely unlikely - that requires extremely expensive investment dies to be made, not something that's ever done for prototyping. They'd probably 3D Print stuff for prototyping now, and the stuff we've seen so far is far too smooth to be 3D printed, even on the highest-end printer available.

Machined? That sounds wrong, CNC'ing or otherwise machining a heatsink would be both wildly impractical, slow, and terribly expensive. Both end pieces (where the fans sit) are likely more or less standard stamped-out sheet metal crimped together at various points, with the cold plate and heatpipes pressed into the structure. The angled middle pieces look like bog-standard aluminium extrusions cut from a long bar. Nothing even remotely exotic about this, but it definitely isn't plastic either. Plastic would be shinier, have rounder edges, and the fins would definitely be less straight (those dense fin stacks have really thin fins).

 

[Chrispy_]

Cold-rolling and stamping out those thin vanes around the fans is 'machining' and slicing the almumium extrusions is machining too. You're thinking CNC machined = machined, but it's just one tiny part of the 'machining' umbrella term. Pretty much if anything is cut down to size, has threads tapped into it, or is cut from a cast or extrusion, it's machined. That's why they're called machine shops, even if there's not a 3-axis CNC column drill in it.

For what it's worth, the alloy extrusions in the passive fins at the middle are actually CNC machined - the extrusions come off as a symmetrical slice and then the recesses like that one we can see for where the power wires to into the board are likely CNC machined out of the extrusion.

 

[Valantar]

Cold-rolling and stamping out those thin vanes around the fans is 'machining' and slicing the almumium extrusions is machining too. You're thinking CNC machined = machined, but it's just one tiny part of the 'machining' umbrella term. Pretty much if anything is cut down to size, has threads tapped into it, or is cut from a cast or extrusion, it's machined. That's why they're called machine shops, even if there's not a 3-axis CNC column drill in it.

For what it's worth, the alloy extrusions in the passive fins at the middle are actually CNC machined - the extrusions come off as a symmetrical slice and then the recesses like that one we can see for where the power wires to into the board are likely CNC machined out of the extrusion.

I wasn't under the impression that 'machining' was commonly used for mostly or fully automated high volume processes like standard heatsink production (which is after all mostly stamping sheet metal and threading that onto hestpipes), but that the term applied more to more manual processes or ones of a lower volume/higher complexity - definitely not limited to CNC milling, but obviously also including routing, turning, drilling, etc. Though I'm no machinist, so it is of course enitely possible that the colloquial meaning of the word I'm used to is inaccurate.

 

[Chrispy_]

Splitting hairs and going OT at this point but yeah, anything that removes material from an oversized workpiece to bring it down to the final dimensions is classed as machining. The etymology of the word refers to the machinists themselves who worked on machines. When the word was originally coined, machinists used hand-tools exclusively.

Machining today refers to any subtractive fabrication process, material is removed rather than modified or assembled. There's no bending, deformation, or stretching of material so I guess the term can be applied to absolutely anything that cuts a workpiece down to size.

It's a broad term really but pretty much anything that's milled, cut, drilled, tapped, or turned is machined.

 

[Caring1]

Splitting hairs and going OT at this point but yeah, anything that removes material from an oversized workpiece to bring it down to the final dimensions is classed as machining. The etymology of the word refers to the machinists themselves who worked on machines. When the word was originally coined, machinists used hand-tools exclusively.

Machining today refers to any subtractive fabrication process, material is removed rather than modified or assembled. There's no bending, deformation, or stretching of material so I guess the term can be applied to absolutely anything that cuts a workpiece down to size.

It's a broad term really but pretty much anything that's milled, cut, drilled, tapped, or turned is machined.

Unless done by hand, if you really want to split hairs.