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Nvidia’s Thermal Solution, In Depth
Nvidia's Founders Edition card employs two 8.5cm axial fans with 13 blades each in its effort to move heat away from TU104 as quickly and evenly as possible. The forged aluminum shroud cannot be completely disassembled without the use of force (or a special tool we don't have—force is looking like the better option at this point).
Although it looks less imposing than previous-generation Founders Edition cards, GeForce RTX 2080's thermal solution is quite massive. Without thermal pads, our laboratory scale says it weighs 935g.
The following image shows the bottom of Nvidia's vapor chamber with the backplate and PCB removed. Nvidia says the fin stack is soldered to the vapor chamber, so it'd be difficult to separate the two pieces.
The base of GeForce RTX 2080’s mounting plate differs from what we found on the RTX 2080 Ti, since both cards employ dissimilar layouts. This explains their slight weight variance. Everything else, from the vapor chamber to the cooling fins to the fans, is identical.
GeForce RTX 2080’s backplate layout is unique as well. Most obvious is that Nvidia places thermal pads in different locations corresponding to components up top on the PCB.
| Cooling Subsystem, At a Glance | |
| Cooler Type | Air cooler |
| GPU Cooling | Vapor chamber |
| Cooling Fins | Aluminum, oriented vertically |
| VRM Cooling | Via mounting frame |
| RAM Cooling | Via mounting frame |
| Fans | 2x 8.5cm axial fans, 13 blades eachNo semi-passive mode |
| Backplate | Yes, helps with cooling |
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