Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 unveiled - what turing really is all about | Page 13

Nvidia Founders Edition: Live well, beautiful blower.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070 Founders Edition cards represent a general departure from the long-held "reference" design, which was first introduced visually similarly in 2012 with the GeForce GTX 690. Even then, for once, an axial fan was experimented with, all later cards were then again based on the DHE (Direct Heat Exhaust) principle with radial fans. This brings the heated air directly at the slot aperture out of the housing. This keeps them away from the bowels of the PC. You can like that, but…

… many enthusiasts, however, felt unintentionally put under (air) pressure. Since radial fans press the air very quickly through the tight channels of the heat sink, they tend to be louder under load than free-acting thermal solutions with multiple axial fans, which rely on turbulence rather than pure throughput. And because Nvidia tried to keep the reference boards running as quietly as possible, they were often accused of limiting GPU boost clock frequencies and/or even throttling performance.

Unfortunately or thank God, these times are now over for all of us. The new design of the Founders Edition dispenses with a radial fan and relies on two axial fans. These are located above a dense block of cooling fins, which, according to Nvidia, sit on the largest vapor chamber ever used on a graphics card. I'll certainly compare that to the Sapphire R9 Fury or the RX Vega Nitro+, whose Chamber also had gigantic dimensions. Let's see…

A forged aluminium cover encloses the radiator over the entire length, but leaves everything open at the top and bottom this time. The heated air is thus directed upwards from the top and downwards towards the motherboard. The aesthetics are already suffering a little and one sacrifices the prestige of the reference boards of the previous generation of Nvidia on the altar of optical insignificance.

However, players who take great care in building PCs with proper airflow should be able to enjoy a better overall experience, as the axial fan solutions can guarantee more performance or lower temperatures at a certain noise level Allow. In addition, the axial fans offer improved acoustics compared to the vacuum cleaner blowers when the GPU is operating at its power limit.

Another potential selling point is the improvement of the overclocking margin in the Founders Edition. Part of this also comes from the increased capacity of the cooler. But not only…

Power supply drilled and soothed

But Nvidia also argues that the power supply voltage converters allow for nearly 60W of additional capacity beyond the 260W already priced at the standard. At the same time, the efficiency is optimized by eight-phase voltage converters, whereby this circuit is able to dynamically switch the individual phases on and off depending on the load.

The intervals of the voltage changes should have changed and be less granular. It will be a pleasure for me to measure just that. Up to a millisecond, this should also be possible as error-free as possible (aliasing should be avoided).