Chinese manufacturer AX-Gaming has announced its interpretation of the NVIDIA RTX 4090 chip: in white. Aimed at gamers who care for a bit more (or a bit less) contrast in their rigs, the AX-Gaming RTX 4090 X3W makes use of the same AD102 chip as our current best graphics card. Its backplate even showcases this with a blue, stylized "Ada 1."
The AX-Gaming RTX 4090 X3W isn't that much of a novelty in the brand's design choice: AX-Gaming tends to manufacture white graphics cards, which represent the majority of the company's portfolio. The company started designing cards around the time of Nvidia's RTX 20-series (the ones that introduced raytracing at enormous performance costs), and launched as many as 15 designs for the RTX 30-series — its products must have been well received.
Based on the card's structure and where it's being sold, we'd say it's probably manufactured by Palit.
The cooler itself is mostly white, but has some elements to break up the snowiness. These are low-contrast brushed aluminum and blue, and their presence is mostly seen in the card's faceplate. They geometrically split the three 90 mm fans responsible for airflow circulation, what AX-Gaming calls its "Punk Max" design. The fans guarantee airflow through the cooler's fin array, cooling the heat being pulled out of AD102's computations through nine 6mm copper heatpipes.
Each of the fans also carry painted details on their centers; the middle fan features AX-Gaming's logo, while the outermost fans feature a stylized "ABXY" logo. It's perhaps lucky that the logos themselves will look like a spinning disc when the card is being put through its paces.
The backplate is mostly white, broken by a cutout pattern that allows for airflow to circulate more freely. It's here that we see the "Ada 1" logo, the "RTX 4090" identifier, and the company's logo, all in understated detailing. Alongside the card, the edge that carries the 16-pin power connector is complimented by a white metal grill and "RTX 4090" in the same brushed aluminum color, while the company's logo features an LED lighting system.
A Chinese media outlet has already gotten its hands on the AX-Gaming RTX 4090 X3W, and discovered that the core clock is set at 2550 MHz — 30 MHz higher than Nvidia's own reference design (2520 MHz). Performance figures from the outlet confirm it's behaving as an RTX 4090 should.
One of the ways to acquire this card from AX-Gaming outside China would be to order it through an online retailer such as Aliexpress. There, we found a single unit of the AX-Gaming RTX 4090 X3W for sale... in the flagship shop for another graphics cards brand, Galaxy (also a Palit sub-brand).
On the bright side, it carries a discount of 30% off. Of course, this 30% off brings the price down from an incredible $4,099 to a still-incredible $2,869, and does not include shipping.
If you're looking for a white graphics card for your rig, remember that Colorful has already teased its white iGame Ultra GPU, while Asus (ROG Strix White) and Galax (with its Boomstar and HOF series) are also looking to enter this market. Perhaps one of these would be a better fit?
