Nvidia's Prototype Quad-Slot Cooler Had Hidden Fan

Nvidia
(Image credit: Hayaka/Goofish)

Nvidia's prototype quad-slot cooling system for never-released 40-series graphics card has made quite a splash among enthusiasts in the recent months partly because of an unusual PCB mounting and partly because of its size. But the cooler apparently has an interesting wrinkle: it has a third fan inside to boost its performance even further.

 @Harukaze5719 has found more pictures of the ultimate GeForce RTX 40-series cooling system published by Hayaka, the owner of the cooler who once wanted to sell it for $120,000. This time around, Hayaka disassembled the cooling system and discovered that in addition to two large fans, it has a small fan inside that is meant to generate additional airflow. It also turned out that the prototype cooling system has 22 heat pipes to effectively distribute heat dissipated by the AD102 graphics processor as well as its voltage regulating module.

PCB placement, 22 heat pipes, and three fans indicate that the prototype of the monstrous graphics card was meant to deliver maximum possible performance at maximum possible power. To that end, we are dealing with a prototype cooling system that is meant to deliver overkill performance for simply the best graphics card available.

Meanwhile, an interesting thing about the current prototype is that it only has one 12VHPWR auxiliary PCIe power connector that can deliver up to 600W of power, so a cooler this large might be an overkill for the board. Then again, if Nvidia's plan was to develop the world's highest-performing air cooler for an ultimate graphics card, then this monstrous unit was a way to go.

Yet, it would be interesting to literally hear a cooling system with three fans one of which is located inside the cooler. While Nvidia's cooling systems for Founders Edition graphics cards tend to be rather quiet, it is unlikely that this particular device aimed at the graphics cards sometimes referred to as 'The Beast' was ever meant to be quiet.

 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • Geef
    If anyone ever gets a loud fan in your system maybe look into the 'be Quiet!' cases. I use one and it made a difference, although some sound still gets through the back and bounces off the wall to my ears. I might try a sound dampener there.
    Reply
  • Viking2121
    Geef said:
    If anyone ever gets a loud fan in your system maybe look into the 'be Quiet!' cases. I use one and it made a difference, although some sound still gets through the back and bounces off the wall to my ears. I might try a sound dampener there.
    What does that have to do with a monster graphics card?
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    Viking2121 said:
    What does that have to do with a monster graphics card?
    Yeah I am not sure how those dots connect. Maybe he thinks their loud? But even when I overclocked my RTX 4090 it barely maked a sound running full tilt. Nvidia and AIB had these heats inks so over built its actually nice from a sound standpoint. I get more noise from my water pump than I have most of time with my gpu fans set to 63% as my m.2 drives over heat otherwise under the gpu.

    Point being I can't imagine a full fat or close Ti with a quad slot cooler to be very loud even if they did crank the wattage to 600w like rumored. Those heat sinks are massive, it can't be stressed enough lol. Just look at size of those triple slot 4080/90 cards.

    I literally had trouble shopping for my wife's case to hold her 4090 and still have room for a HDD cage to back up our storage pool on my PC that serves the whole house. Went with a Fractal Design Define 7 XL for the record. She loved the look of that case thankfuly as choices were slim(ish).
    Reply