A Chinese modder and Bilibili creator has shared (via VideoCardz) their design for a full-fat Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 laptop. By full-fat, we mean PC enthusiast ‘Newbie who loves overclocking’ (we will call them Newbie from now on) has crammed a power-thirsty desktop RTX 4090 into a portable clamshell luggable. This powerful device features one of the best graphics cards available, weighs over 15 pounds (around 8kg, including PSU), and is rather bulky, as you might imagine. Still, the finished article is about as neat as it could be.
It is easy to grasp why the Bilibili creator took on this project. The RTX 4090 laptop GPU is disappointingly anemic compared to its desktop counterpart. This difference is understandable in some ways – as the thermal design of a commercial creator or gaming laptop is already being pushed to the max by fitting an RTX 4090 Laptop GPU. However, Nvidia’s insistence that the top-end laptop and desktop GPU are both ‘RTX 4090’ graphics is misleading. GPU core counts, power consumption, and memory quotas are different and based on different silicon.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | RTX 4090 Desktop | RTX 4090 Laptop |
|---|---|---|
| GPU Architecture | AD102 using TSMC N4 | AD103 using TSMC N4 |
| Die Size | 609mm2 | 379mm2 |
| Transistors | 76.3 billion | 45.9 billion |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 | 9,728 |
| GPU Base/Boost Clocks (MHz) | 2,230 / 2,520 | 1,590 / 2,040 |
| Video RAM | 24GB GDDR6X, 384-bit | 16GB GDDR6, 256-bit |
| Board Power (W) | 450 | 150 |
However, Nvidia’s laptop/desktop naming shenanigans seem to be broadly tolerated in 2024. The RTX 4060 seems to be the one exception in the current generation, being very similar in spec across desktop and laptop versions.
Refocusing on this portable powerhouse project, Newbie started their project with a barebones OEM laptop chassis. This wasn’t a typical mainstream design, as it was built to accommodate an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D (desktop AM5) processor, a mini ITX motherboard, and so on.
This laptop chassis for desktop parts seems about as good a starting point as could be hoped for—but it was by no means designed to have an RTX 4090 wedged into it. Newbie doesn’t share an image of the desktop RX 4090 before fitting. Still, our view of the installation shows it is a blower-style card with compressed thickness across the fan area, stepping up to full height and allowing for a bigger heatsink later.
So, what kind of performance does this desktop RTX 4090 deliver in its luggable home? In the video, we see a few apps and games being played. One we recognize is Time Spy, where this PC scores 28,490 points. According to UL Benchmarks, an average PC desktop with RTX 4090 achieves 30,482 points. Nevertheless, Newbie’s result is still much better than the average score of 20,459 for an RTX 4090 laptop GPU.
Considering its tight confines, the RTX 4090 runs pretty cool in this clamshell chassis. Newbie asserts that the machine ran a gaming load for 27 hours with the GPU averaging 70 degrees Celsius despite chewing through somewhere between 440 and 475W for the duration. We wonder how loud the fans were under load, but sadly, the video clips didn’t include situational audio and were accompanied by a chirpy electronic music soundtrack.
