We've seen a wide variety of fake GPUs end up on Tom's Hardware, including entirely hollow ones that don't have a die to begin with. Now, scammers have found a new trick to make the con more believable — they're selling graphics cards with dies made out of plastic. That's what happened with Brother Zhang, a well-known Chinese hardware shop owner, who came across a used, broken RTX 4090 purchased for roughly $222.

As expected, you're receiving a dud for that price, and it's usually a gamble these vendors are willing to take in order to repair the GPU and flip it for profit. Or, in this case, produce educational content for spreading awareness. At first, the PCB inside the graphics card looked normal, but upon closer inspection, the die already had irregular markings. It said it's an "AD102-300-A1" die, which is what the RTX 4090 actually uses.

However, the "TW 3043E2" above it indicates the card was somehow manufactured in 2030, which is not possible unless you're a time traveler. There was no QR code engraved at the corner of the die either. All the componentry surrounding the chip also didn't look authentic, as if it had been replaced. When the technician touched the core, it felt unusually smooth, and, sure enough, it turned out to be plastic; there was no silicon inside.

The VRAM wasn't made out of plastic, which is a real possibility, but all the chips were "scrap" and only put there to fill up the PCB. So, neither the GPU nor the GDDR6X memory was real. Brother Zhang essentially got a $200 paperweight that looks kind of cool if you're a hardware geek. Thankfully, this card didn't belong to any customer, and the fact that it ended up with a repair shop means it can serve as a precautionary tale.

Always remain vigilant when making secondhand purchases, especially for expensive parts like a graphics card. In this day and age, just benchmarking a GPU isn't enough because scammers have been known to swap RTX 4090 dies for RTX 3090 or 3080 silicon. If a deal looks too good to be true, it more than likely is. Unless you can open up the card to check its PCB, make sure to tally the benchmark results with the performance you see for it online.

Just a month into 2026, we may have our first melting of the RTX 4090, one of the best graphics cards, with many more likely to follow given these GPUs' track record. This incident was a bit special, though, as the meltdown was caught on camera live during a gaming session (embedded below). A streamer by the name of "jessick" was playing Marvel Rivals when her MSI RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio suddenly erupted in smoke.

As the video below shows (click the X post to expand), the 16-pin power connector is burning in real time, with smoke and embers visible. The rightmost wire of the 16-pin cable seems to be the culprit, as its shielding has completely melted away, and you can see the bare copper underneath. The connector's plastic has also liquified and conjoined with the molten cable.

Despite this horrific sight, the streamer didn't immediately shut off their PC for some reason. It goes without saying —if you see (or smell) something burning in your computer, you should cut power to it right away. There's no telling how much damage one faulty component can cause in a chain reaction, and a melting GPU carrying up to 600W of power should be the last risk you should take.

The GPU we're looking at is an RTX 4090 MSI Gaming X Trio variant with a 450W TGP and an 850W recommended power supply rating. We can see the streamer used a custom white cable to power the card, which likely failed to insert correctly. 16-pin power connectors, especially first-gen 12VHPWR units, are extremely picky during installation.

The slightest bit of looseness or bending can become catastrophic before you know it. If one of the connector pins isn't in complete contact with the cable, the others will bear its load, causing the connector to overheat. The moment even one pin or wire starts to get hot, trouble follows, just like in our streamer's case. We hope jessick turned off the GPU immediately after filming her video and promptly submitted an RMA.

Shunt mods on mobile devices are always exciting because they seem to push the boundaries of what's possible in a more practical way. Laptops are thermally constrained and, thus, power-limited compared to their desktop counterparts. Even a fully specced-out mobile GPU can't compete against its desktop variant, so when someone tries to break through the manufactured barriers to unlock its full potential, well, we let the results speak for themselves. And the numbers coming out of this Reddit user's laptop are nothing short of impressive.

Zephyrus M16 4090 Shunt Modded - Thin and Light Laptop Matches 5090 Laptops from r/GamingLaptops

On the r/GamingLaptops subreddit, user u/thatavidreadertrue (we'll call him Avid) details their experience shunt-modding an Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 gaming laptop with an RTX 4090, and they come with the benchmarks to back it all up. For those unaware, shunt-modding essentially refers to tricking your GPU into thinking it's consuming way less power than it actually is. This allows the GPU to boost higher and for longer before thermal-throttling, enabling the silicon to be overclocked through clever electronic surgery rather than brute-forcing the cooling.

In Avid's case, they took a 1 mΩ resistor and placed it in parallel with the GPU’s existing 5 mΩ shunt resistor on the motherboard. Through Ohm's law, that comes out to an 83% reduction in resistance, meaning the GPU is now underreporting its wattage by roughly 6x (down to just 0.83mΩ). The 4090 in the Zephyrus M16 has a 150W TGP, meaning the firmware won't allow it to go past that. But with the shunt mod, the GPU's internal logic is altered, so when it says it's consuming 40-45W, it's actually drawing around 240W in reality.

This allows for a pretty incredible bump in performance, so much so that this 4090 starts to match or even outperform the RTX 5090 mobile in a multitude of scenarios. Avid didn't test any games, but the synthetic benchmarks are enough to give us an idea. The most drastic difference comes in Solar Bay Extreme, where the shunt-modded 4090 scored 24,617 points, which was 35% higher than the "next best M16" which could only manage 18,166. Compared to the average 5090 laptop that can achieve 22,877 points, our 4090 with wings was still 7.6% ahead.

There was essentially no difference in Port Royal, though, and the shunt mod was actually a smidge slower in Steel Nomad, but across all tests, the average gain was still 3.5% compared to a regular 5090 mobile, and almost 20% compared to the other 4090 GPUs in the Zephyrus M16. To deal with the extra heat, all Avid had to do was upgrade the liquid metal to PTM7950 phase-change thermal pads, and swap out the stock VRM thermal pads with Upsiren UX Pro Ultra.

While thermal details were scarce, Avid did mention in a comment that the 4090 gets up to 80-84°C but "doesn't thermal throttle" while the CPU can get a bit toasty at around 90°C. We also learned that Avid undervolts the shunt-modded 4090, limiting the voltage to 800mV for gaming, which makes sense since otherwise the GPU would keep boosting to potentially dangerous levels.

Overall, this config can strike a nice balance between power, performance, temps, and noise. That's before we even factor in the price, because Avid actually got this Zephyrus M16 from the secondhand market for only $1600, which is a good deal in and of itself. But, when you consider that it beats an RTX 5090 laptop after modding for almost no additional charge, it transforms into next-level value.

As always, a disclaimer is due: Messing with your hardware on this level can cause irreparable harm to your device, especially if you're not sure what you're doing. The machine is designed with a certain thermal and power envelope in mind, so bypassing that can only lead to so much improvement before you hit the point of diminishing returns. However, if there's room, Avid's shunt mod shows us it doesn't take much to raise the ceiling.

Remember those Frakenstein GeForce RTX 4090 48GB graphics cards emerging from China? Russian PC technician and builder VIK-on has provided detailed insights into how Chinese factories are transforming the GeForce RTX 4090, once regarded as one of the best graphics cards, to effectively double its memory capacity specifically for AI workloads.

As a mainstream product, the GeForce RTX 4090 does not support memory chips in a clamshell configuration, unlike Nvidia's professional and data center products. Essentially, this means that the Ada Lovelace flagship only houses memory chips on one side of the PCB. In clamshell mode, graphics cards typically feature memory chips on both sides of the PCB. This limitation is addressed by the GeForce RTX 4090 4GB "upgrade kit," which sells for around $142 in China.

The upgrade kit comprises a custom PCB designed with a clamshell configuration, facilitating the installation of twice the number of memory chips. Most components are pre-installed at the manufacturing facility, requiring the user to solder the GPU and memory chips onto the PCB. Additionally, the upgrade kit includes a blower-style cooling solution, designed for integration with workstation and server configurations that utilize multi-GPU architectures.

VIK-on demonstrated the process of extracting the AD102 silicon and twelve 2GB GDDR6X memory chips from the MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim and installing them onto the barebone PCB. The technician utilized spare GDDR6X memory chips from defective graphics cards, thereby obtaining additional GDDR6X memory at no cost. Clearly, this operation requires specialized soldering skills and access to appropriate high-end tools.

It's not often we see a repair video that includes no repairing, but that's exactly what happened when an Asus TUF RTX 4090 landed on the legendary desks of Northridge Fix. We've covered their escapades before, how they revived a RX 7800 XT and brought a dead 4090 back to life, but this 4090 befell a fate worse than death — it was a hollow scam.

The unlucky customer, who got the card second-hand off eBay, couldn't get their GPU to post no matter what. As such, they sent it in for repair with a brief note explaining: "The device does not display from any output." When it was opened up to be inspected, Alex, our host, found something truly harrowing. There were no GPU core or VRAM chips on the PCB. While the card looked fine from the outside, it was really just a skeleton.

Alex went on to explain how this has become a common occurrence, saying that his repair shop receives dead RTX 4090s like these all the time with stripped internals. These cards are sold for cheap on used marketplaces, where uninformed buyers often fall for the unrealistic prices. Even then, some of these bad actors have started to price these hollow 4090s "properly" such that no one would expect a too-good-to-be-true scam, so the trap evidently still works.

GPUs like this largely come from underground modding operations in China, where many high-end GPUs are not easy to import. Skilled technicians take existing gaming-grade GPUs, like a 4090, and surgically remove their core and VRAM so put them on custom PCBs with upgraded components-most often higher VRAM capacity. Stripped donor cards subsequently make their way onto online marketplaces and trick buyers into buying useless graphics cards.

A leaker from the Chipell forums (via HXL) published images of Nvidia-designed PCBs (printed circuit boards) that were used to bring up the new Blackwell RTX 50-series GPUs while the company was developing its latest graphics cards. The boards feature debugging interfaces alongside overwhelming power delivery circuitry, with the latter allowing designers to better understand how particular GPUs work and respond to various factors.

As an example of this, development/bring up boards for Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 (AD102) and RTX 5090 (GB202) — according to blogger Panzerlized — feature four 16-pin 12VHPWR and 12V-2x6 power connectors, respectively. By contrast, development cards for the GeForce RTX 3090 (GA102) and RTX 3080 (GA104) featured four or three 8-pin power connectors. So it's not just the latest GPUs, as older-generation products also featured an 'excessive' number of power connectors. 

The higher number of power connectors on development/bring-up boards is not surprising or indicative of any underlying problems. Engineers tend to power up such graphics cards in stages, including core voltages, uncore voltages, memory voltages, I/O rails, and so on. This is done to verify that all power the rails initialize correctly, and that no short-circuit or out-of-spec behavior occurs.

The cards also feature debugging interfaces, test points, and instrumentation headers to allow for in-depth measurement and monitoring. All these are present on the cards pictured. Finally, there are plenty of jumpers on the PCBs to reconfigure various things.

As an added bonus, these boards can deliver an excessive amount of power to the GPUs. This can help Nvidia and its partners determine the exact capabilities and limits of the processors, as well as testing their performance under various conditions. For example, a prototype GeForce RTX 4090 had as many as 45 power phases along with four 12VHPWR power connectors. That's enough to deliver up to 2400 watts to the card, which far exceeds the amount of power required by the end product. (And we suspect Nvidia never actually tried to feed 2400W into a prototype.)

Some extreme overclockers would probably be excited to acquire such a graphics cards. The excessive power delivery setup could help with liquid nitrogen cooling, as one possibility. However, these development/bring up boards usually come with older BIOS versions that only work with select GPUs, and due to their early nature there's a good chance that they won't fully work or behave as expected. Getting drivers that support such cards could also be difficult.

Regardless, it's interesting to see the development boards used by Nvidia and its graphics cards partners. Designing, prototyping, testing, debugging, and finalizing modern computer components can be a very complex process, and even with all the work that goes into the launch of a new GPU, issues can crop up once cards are in the hands of thousands of gamers with a wide variety of hardware configurations.

Nvidia says that its flagship RTX 5090 GPUs will not experience the melting 16-pin connectors that plagued RTX 4090 graphics cards. Company representatives made this announcement during Nvidia RTX AI Day 2025 in South Korea, as reported by Quasar Zone (machine translated). Nvidia is confident that the changes it made to the connector design will avoid the issue, despite the RTX 5090 having a higher TDP of 575 watts (versus the 4090’s 450 watts).

The company, represented by Nvidia APAC Director of Tech Marketing Jeff Yen, GeForce Tech Director for Marketing Sean Cleveland, and Nvidia Korea Senior VP Sunwook Kim, was answering some questions during the Nvidia RTX AI Day 2025 event. Someone in the audience asked if the RTX 5090 solved the problem that plagued the RTX 4090. The issue being "where the connector overheated and melted”. Nvidia answered, “We don’t expect that to happen with the RTX 50 series. We made some changes to the connector to respond to the issue at the time, and we know that it is not happening now, about two years later.”

The root cause of the overheating connector is often seen as an improperly or loosely attached cable, or if the cable is bent near the plug, causing too much stress at the connection point. Because of this, the industry developed the new 12V-2x6 connector, which replaced the 12VHPWR connector.

This new connector seemingly solved the overheating issue, although it’s been reported as late as April 2024 that many RTX 4090s continue to melt—but these were often older cards that used the older standard or those that used defective Cablemod 16-pin GPU power adapters that have since been recalled and discontinued.

Since Nvidia has released the RTX 5090 some two years after it started using the 12V-2x6 connector, we can safely assume that overheating power connectors will no longer be an issue. Still, some AIBs are erring on the side of caution to avoid a repeat of the melting RTX 4090 connectors.

Zotac added a Safety Light feature that prevents the GPU from turning on until the power cable is fully and securely inserted. On the other hand, MSI introduced a simpler solution: it used a yellow-tipped 16-pin power adapter as a visual indicator. A fully seated power cable wouldn’t show any of the yellow parts—so if you still spot it after plugging it into your GPU, then the power cable is not properly attached.

We’ve previously covered a purported RTX 4090 Ti prototype circulating the internet, and someone has finally tested and disassembled the entire thing. Gamers Nexus conducted the test and tear down, where the prototype GPU was finally revealed to be an RTX 4090 with a massive flow-through heatsink and three fans. Another unique thing about this GPU is that its PCB is mounted parallel to the motherboard, and that it features a metal PCIe connector that’s connected to a socket directly on the GPU’s board.

Gamers Nexus host Steve Burke said that it took hours to take the GPU apart, especially as it’s just a prototype and there’s no available guide on how to disassemble the unit. There were also a ton of different screws that he had to get to, requiring him to use many screwdrivers. But once he was able to free the GPU’s PCB from its heatsink, Burke said that it’s most likely an RTX 4090 graphics card with 24GB of VRAM.

The PCB itself of the RTX 4090 prototype is fairly similar to other GPUs despite its unique mounting method. What makes it unique is its massive cooling solution, which, according to his tests, had the GPU running about 20 degrees cooler than a standard RTX 4090 FE that’s consuming the same amount of power. This kind of performance has only previously been seen on watercooled GPUs, showing how effective the three-fan, four-slot flow-through design Nvidia used on this prototype.

Aside from the external marking and internal configuration saying that the GPU is an RTX 4090, its driver also said that it was 4090. This likely makes it a prototype for a heatsink design for the 4090, unless Nvidia just flashed it with a 4090 driver to mask its true identity. However, when he tested the prototype’s actual FPS performance on software, the numbers showed that it had about 10% less performance than the RTX 4090 FE the Gamers Nexus team had on hand, which is on par for a prototype 4090 unit that’s not yet optimized.

So, after much speculation, we can finally put to rest that this GPU is in fact an RTX 4090, and not an RTX 4090 Ti. It could be that Nvidia was just using this prototype as a testbed to see if it could create a heatsink that can handle massive amounts of heat for an RTX 4090 Ti that we didn’t see the company release. And given that it just launched the RTX 50-series a couple of days ago, we likely never will.

The TinyBox AI accelerator is now available on sale on the tinygrad website starting at $15k. This small 16.25-inch deep, 12U freestanding unit sports six AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX or Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs designed for deep learning and AI acceleration applications. While the computer is relatively more expensive versus consumer gaming desktop PCs, it’s much more affordable than a single Nvidia H100 or AMD MI300X accelerator, which are priced between $10 to $40k apiece.

tinygrad founder George Hotz shared the news on X about the availability of TinyBox, saying that they have 13 units in stock as of August 27. He also claims that it offers “the best perf/$ ML box in the world” and that it’s fully networkable. Although the company faced some challenges with the AMD GPUs it used for its systems, it was eventually able to find a solution to this problem. At the same time, it also added the option to use Nvidia GPUs instead to avoid AMD’s driver instability, although this comes at a 67% premium.

Despite these seemingly high prices, the company reportedly already has 583 pre-orders for the system. And, with the drama with AMD’s GPUs behind it, it looks like that tinygrad is ready to go full steam ahead with the sale of its TinyBox AI accelerators. Companies have a choice between the more affordable AMD GPU or the Nvidia system. However, as the tinygrad said in a Tweet before, “If you like to tinker and feel pain, buy red. The driver still crashes the GPU and hangs sometimes, but we can work together to improve it.”

We'd like to believe that it has finally solved the issues with the AMD GPUs. Hence, it’s making it available to the market. But with the popularity of Nvidia in the AI accelerator space, it does make sense for the company to give this option, too. It’s just unfortunate, though, that the Intel Arc-powered TinyBox is still in the prototype stage and that it has no plans to ship it. It would’ve been nice if we had the option for that as well, so we hope that the company changes its mind in the future and starts shipping ‘blue’ models of the TinyBox.

Too many flagship graphics cards are suffering unnecessary irreparable damage, reckons NorthWestRepair. The TechTuber, who specializes in graphics card repairs, has published a new short that bemoans a rash of Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 failures due to poor shipping and improper mounting practices. Remember, these flagship cards can cost $2,000 or more, but some choose to save nickels and dimes by skimping on packaging or support. That’s a false economy.

In the linked short, Tony from NorthWestRepair begins by showing a quartet of bare RTX 4090 PCBs all laid out next to each other. He explains that they all suffered the same fate: ripped pads on or around the GPU socket.

Tony concludes that the practically irreparable damage resulted from the card, or system housing the card, being damaged in transit. Another common cause of damage that looks like this is when weighty GPUs are installed without proper support. We guess sudden impacts, where improperly packed parcels are roughly handled, deliver the most catastrophic damage. Ripped pads like those shown could be the result of the shearing force between the PCB and cooler during an impact. However, Tony has seen this same kind of damage from cards installed without GPU supports when they were needed.

Proper packaging and GPU support are such minor expenses. Considering that an RTX 4090 costs around $2,000, this damage verges on a tragedy.

At the end of the short video, Tony shows off another RTX 4090 that has just arrived at his repair store. The box looks like it is the correct size, but apparently, it contained such scant packaging that the graphics card inside was “tumbling in the box.” Soon after he unpacked the card, apparent impact damage was seen on the twisted metal fan shroud. Tony hasn’t checked this GPU yet but was pretty confident it would also suffer from ripped pads on the PCB.

“Please package your GPUs properly using at least 2-inches of foam, or bubble wrap, all the way around it,” pleaded NorthWestRepair at the end of the video short. He went on to explain that when sending components for repair they should be “tightly packed inside the box so it does not tumble.”

An MSI sample repaired using a donor PCB

The above video short was released just ahead of a full feature video from NorthWestRepair, which told the tale of why 50% of all 4090 will end up in the trash. After his initial investigation of the MSI on the repair bench, Tony decided to lift the GPU core. He found “a ton of ripped pads,” meaning the GPU would be categorized as a ‘no fix.’ Fixing these is considered impractical, as it would take “a week or two” to do, with any fix also being prone to failure.

If you watch this second video, the second half of it documents Tony’s attempt to salvage the working components from the MSI and add them to a donor board that doesn’t have the solder pads problem. However, the donor board has its own issues, with evidence that little care was taken when stripping it.

This was quite an involved task for Tony’s skills, but as you will see, experience and patience paid off. The combination of the two non-working RTX 4090s resulted in a working model of one of the best graphics cards. Subsequent stress testing revealed that this one-good from two-bad graphics card salvage job was a resounding success.

According to a report shared by MyDrivers, people in countries neighboring China have been buying full pre-built PC systems equipped with GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs only to strip out the graphics cards and sell them into the Chinese market despite US sanctions forbidding the practice. For example, it says that someone bought 20 powerful PC systems packing RTX 4090 graphics costing more than US$4,500 per system (total spent was over US$91,000) in the pursuit of quick and easy profits. The root causes of the above shenanigans include the U.S. tech sanctions on China and the “castrated” GeForce RTX 4090D that Nvidia provides as an alternative.

Apparently, the small-time entrepreneurs of Asia have been snatching up stocks of desktop GeForce RTX 4090 cards as quickly as they hit shelves to sell to the sanctions-hit Chinese. Retailers thought they might stop this market disruption by implementing full system bundling tactics where people wanted to upgrade to one of the best graphics cards available in 2024. However, the necessity to buy high-end and expensive systems just to get a hold of an RTX 4090 doesn’t seem to have doused desires for the flagship GPU. There must still be healthy profits to be made.

MyDrivers says that PC and components markets in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, and other countries have all been affected by the surge in interest in the RTX 4090. According to the source report, some markets where buyers are happy to sanction swerve and ship out RTX 4090 cards to Chinese customers are seeing prices on their home markets rising by as much as 60%.

We checked listings on Taiwan’s PCHome24, and plenty of GeForce RTX 4090 cards were listed without any requirement to purchase in a bundle or a full system. Purchasing from this online outlet requires a local SIM card, in a place where SIM cards are quite strictly controlled and tied to government IDs, so it might be quite resistant to ne’er-do-well scalpers. The best-priced cards at PCHome24 were TWD$62,990 (about US$2,000), including 5% VAT.

Less regulated outlets than PCHome24 may be more vulnerable to individuals or organizations willing to risk capital on buying for China. The MyDrivers report specifically mentions a retailer in Taipei where the headlining 20 complete PCs equipped with RTX 4090 cards were sold. In our experience of buying PCs and components in Taiwan, it is possible to buy ‘cash’ and save on the already rather low VAT rate (5%) when visiting brick-and-mortar or computer mall stores.

Behind the headlining desktop PC stripping, to get RTX 4090 cards for China is obviously the recently implemented U.S. sanctions, which now cover consumer GPUs exceeding certain performance limits. The U.S. should probably lean on allies a bit more to ensure customs officers are up to speed on the latest rules regarding GPU exports to China.

Prices of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090, one of the best graphics cards, are soaring across Asian markets as people are willing to pay hefty sums of cash for them and then resell them in China or Hong Kong at a higher price. This phenomenon is spurred by U.S. export controls that ban shipments of GeForce RTX 4090 to China and numerous other countries. As a result, prices of GeForce RTX 4090 boards in some Asian countries soared by up to 60%, reports Nikkei.

The manufacturer suggested retail price of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 is $1,599, which is quite expensive. But buyers in Guanghua Digital Plaza electronics market in Taiwan and Yongsan electronics market in South Korea 'unzip fanny packs filled with cash' to buy these cards for over $2,500 in a bid to later resell them in China or Hong Kong at triple the price. They do the same in Singapore and Vietnam.

"They are buying these to later resell them to areas that faced U.S. restrictions at a much higher price," one store owner told Nikkei. "They can just carry them to Hong Kong or other Chinese cities."

The rush for Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards led to their price increase across Asia and their scarcity. Overwhelmed by the demand, Taipei's Guanghua market retailers resorted to selling the GeForce RTX 4090 add-in boards only as part of complete gaming systems. But this move did little to discourage buyers as Chinese buyers began to purchase entire gaming PC systems to dismantle them for the hard-to-get graphics cards. This tactic highlights the extreme measures individuals are willing to take to procure these AIBs despite the high costs involved.

A retailer from Taipei told Nikkei that some buyers were so determined to get their hands on the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards that they bought over 20 complete desktop computers, not for the computers themselves, but for the boards inside. According to the retailer, these buyers did not mind paying $4,500 per system as they were confident they could still sell these graphics cards for a good profit.

In November, the U.S. government banned shipments of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 and numerous other high-performance GPUs to Hong Kong, China, and some other countries to circumvent the development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in China.

Indeed, a co-founder of an AI startup based in Hong Kong, who wished to remain anonymous, told Nikkei that the export restrictions have significantly hindered their company's progress. Obtaining AI GPUs via legal channels has become overly hazardous, forcing the company to use an intermediary for their procurement.

The middlemen make hefty profits as GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards can still be bought in many locations in mainland China despite bans.

"There is no stock [of GeForce RTX 4090] right now, but it can take around three to four days to get it here," a vendor at the Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen, China, told Nikkei.

A prominent repair channel on YouTube is warning prospective graphics card buyers that a customer sent in an Amazon-purchased GeForce RTX 4090 which turned out to be a very bad fake. The video, shared by Tony from North West Repair (NWR), underlines the adage ‘buyer beware’ with a bright neon marker. What his customer thought was probably a quick repair job on a $2,000 card turned out to be a ‘no fix’ scam made from a cobbled-together and motley mix of components, including a "fried" RTX 4080 GPU and PCB. The graphics card also had a host of other issues that pointed to a badly cobbled-together FrankenGPU. 

We updated our story as Tony made a point of looking up the fake RTX 4090 card's GPU codename online and asserted it was from an RTX 4090 Laptop, but it is clearly marked as an AD103-300-A1 - which is what you would expect to find on an RTX 4080 desktop PCB.

The product appraisal began with a brief external inspection of the customer’s graphics card, which arrived with an issue described as “shipping damage.” A quick inspection showed an Asus ROG Strix RTX 4090 with 24GB of VRAM was apparently damaged with a PCB crack near the PCIe retention finger and a melted power connector. So far – so ordinary in the world of RTX 4090 cards, but those problems were little more than a flesh wound compared to what was subsequently uncovered.

Suspicions were raised when the repair tech began to remove the cooler to get a look at the underlying PCB. A fake anti-tamper sticker over one of the screws was noticed. Then, the expert repairer noted that the screws were in some cases extremely mis-tensioned.

Getting the triple fan ROG Strix cooler off, with its sticker claiming that beneath it was a ROG Strix 4090 with 24GB of VRAM, a very unpleasant sight awaited. In brief, NWR uncovered an RTX 4080 PCB. That wasn’t all, as the GPU looked fried, according to the repair tech, memory cooling pads were also missing in some areas, and the PCB had various other components that looked like they needed replacing.

By now, you won’t be surprised to hear that NWR passed the verdict that this “shipping damaged” product was a “no fix.” However, Tony indicated he wanted to share this video as he reckons this is something his customers might be seeing more of. Buyers should be cautious when purchasing this kind of product, as what is represented in the video is “100% real and it is now in the US marketplace,” according to the YouTuber.

It is important to note that this pretty useless concoction of non-working parts – dressed up as one of the best graphics cards available to consumers in 2024 – wasn’t sold as a new model. It was received by an NWR customer in a pallet deal from Amazon Returns.

“Hopefully this is the only example we are going to see here in the US market, but I doubt it,” said Tony in his voiceover. As the video ends, he says to stay tuned, promising more (dodgy cards?) are on the way.

What happened here?

The above is quite a horror story and seems to represent an increasingly common form of fraud. We can’t know for sure, but the product received by NWR, apparently from an Amazon pallet deal, may have been an Amazon return where a faulty Franken-graphics-card was returned and someone kept a good working one. The outward description of a cracked PCB and melted power connector might even suggest another level of deception used to return this switched product.

Whatever the history of this particular broken graphics card, it serves to remind buyers of big-ticket devices and components to rigorously document / video their receiving, unboxing, and inspection of a new product. Please be careful out there.

Several factories in China have been busy repurposing Nvidia GeForce RTX gaming graphics cards to create dedicated AI accelerators, according to a report published by the Financial Times (FT). The most popular GPU targeted by the reprocessing plants is one of the best graphics cards available, the GeForce RTX 4090. A manager from one of the factories told the source that he had been responsible for disassembling more than 4,000 Nvidia GeForce graphics cards in December alone.

US sanctions have meant that organizations in China have had difficulty sourcing Nvidia’s most potent AI accelerators. This is believed to have led to several factories establishing disassembly lines to repurpose consumer gaming products from the green team.

With sanctions subsequently tightened further to cover gaming GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4090, Chinese factories have already started to buy batches of the new GeForce RTX 4090D. According to the FT report, the Chinese factory managers are evaluating the RTX 4090D for component performance and harvesting. Nvidia’s China-market RTX 4090D is expected to be about 5% slower than the RTX 4090 in gaming. However, the full mix of modifications made by Nvidia “could mean the slower version was [is] not powerful enough for large language model training,” reports the FT.

An eyebrow-raising aspect of the FT’s report is the assertion that activity at these GPU repurposing factories has ramped up fourfold over a very short period. The source says one Chinese factory processed around 1,000 GeForce RTX graphics cards in November, rising to about 4,000 in December.

Factory managers told the FT that the main customers of the repurposed component AI accelerator cards were the public enterprises and small AI labs that didn’t stockpile enough commercial accelerators before the October sanctions.

Inside a Chinese graphics card disassembly facility

We first reported on China’s consumer graphics card repurposing factories last November. Thanks to an illuminating Baidu social media post, we saw piles of GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards from vendors like Gainward and Palit, which had been acquired for repurposing. Subsequently published photos also showed Asus, Colorful, Zotac, and Gigabyte branded cards piled up, ready for the chop.

The consumer gaming graphics cards were pictured being pulled apart and retrofitted with blower-style coolers by the Chinese social media source. However, there was also said to be an intermediary step, where GPUs and VRAM chips are taken off these gaming graphics cards and then used to populate an ‘AI Accelerator’ PCB.

We shall have to wait and see whether repurposing China-market RTX 4090D graphics cards for AI accelerators is viable. If news comes out that it is, we may see even more sanctions adjustments by the US.

Zotac will not charge extra for custom versions of its GeForce RTX 40-series Super graphics cards that come with enhanced coolers and will sell them at Nvidia's recommended retail prices, the company announced on its website (as noticed by @momomo_us). Meanwhile, the company's factory-overclocked graphics cards will be sold at a premium given their higher performance. 

Zotac will offer Trinity Black Edition and Twin Edge versions of its GeForce RTX 4070 Super, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super, and GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics cards at Nvidia-set MSRPs: $599, $799, and $999, respectively. Meanwhile, factory-overclocked Trinity Black Edition OC, Trinity White Edition OC, Twin Edge OC, and AMP-badged graphics boards will be sold at a premium, the company announced. All of these boards — pre-overclocked or not — are contenders to join the ranks of the best graphics cards available today. 

Although AMD and Nvidia offer reference designs for almost all of their graphics cards to speed up time-to-market, add-in-boards (AIBs) manufacturers, such as Zotac, tend to develop custom cards for two reasons: to differentiate themselves from their rivals with better looks and higher performance as well as to cut down costs. 

Given the fact that factory-overclocked versions of Trinity Black Edition and Twin Edge will use the same printed circuit boards and cooling systems as their counterparts that function at Nvidia-recommended frequencies, it does not look like regular versions were designed with the sole purpose of cutting down costs. As a result, regular Trinity Black Edition and Twin Edge models will likely feature decent overclocking potential (courtesy of a refined PCB and an enhanced cooling system), which makes them a good deal, assuming that they will be available at MSRP. 

Meanwhile, those who want to have enhanced performance right out of box and some further overclocking potential will be able to buy Zotac's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super AMP Holo 16GB GDDR6X or GeForce RTX 4080 Super AMP Extreme Airo 16GB GDDR6X that promise to feature significantly improved clocks and a refined coolers.

Gigabyte is prepping four GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card designs, with only the WindForce and Eagle models shipping with standard 8-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors, while the Gaming and Aero models will have 12VHPWR 16-pin connectors. All four designs will have three fans, based on the leaked images. 

One of the things that strikes the eye with the pictures of the upcoming GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards from Gigabyte, Palit, MSI, and Zotac is that most of them are triple-wide with a massive cooling system, just as my colleague Mark reported yesterday about the hoard of MSI's GeForce RTX 4070 AIBs.

While it is not particularly surprising that many of GeForce RTX 4070-based graphics cards will be huge, considering the overclocking potential of the GPU that powers them, it is reasonable to expect more compact AIBs too. This is perhaps where MSI's GeForce RTX 4070 Ventus 2X comes into play. The board features a dual-fan two-wide cooling system and will likely fit into most of PCs used by gamers. Of course, different GeForce RTX boards feature different power connections, some keep using well-proven eight-pin plugs, while others employ the all-new 12VHPWR.

Apparently, budget-friendly options from Zotac and Palit will also have dual-fan designs and 12GB of GDDR6X memory, yet take the information with a grain of salt as this comes from unofficial sources.

A Hong Kong-based PC enthusiast got much less than he bargained for when he bought a used MSI GeForce RTX 4090 card earlier this month. HKEPC reports that one of its readers bought the card for HK$13,000 ($1,660) only to find it was missing its GPU and several VRAM chips. The buyer, Mr Hong, says that the local police weren’t very interested in his plight, so he shared his experience with HKEPC as a cautionary tale.

The RTX 4090 sting was executed via the Carousell online second-hand market place, with the exchange of goods and money taking place in person. Mr Hong saw the second-hand MSI GeForce RTX 4090 card on Carousell and thought he was being careful when he requested a transaction in person. He arranged to meet the seller near a train station and noted the product he received in the handover looked just like the one in the second-hand listing's photos.

At home, Hong installed the card and must have felt some relief when the graphics card’s ARGB lighting fired up – looking just like the product listed on Carousell. However, his post-purchase experience would quickly turn sour, as he noticed the fans didn’t spin up as expected, and no graphical output could be cajoled from the card. The RTX 4090 scam victim’s next step was to take the expensive non-working card to a local repairer. It didn’t take long to discover the RTX 4090’s GPU was missing, and several of the VRAM chips had been removed too.

From the machine translation of the HKEPC report, it is hard to understand why Mr Hong now feels he has no way to get his money back or find any justice. The report seems to suggest that any second-hand transaction between two parties is hard to pursue, and Mr Hong could no longer contact the seller, so the case wouldn’t be passed to the Hong Kong Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

Hong, and HKEPC, end their report with a solemn message, asking everyone to be careful when buying a second-hand card from Carousell. The same wise words are probably just as applicable worldwide with market style online marketplaces which provide little or no buyer / seller protections.

Of course, GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards are even more highly prized in China now, due to the adjustments in US sanctions. So losing the money on this fake must have been a bitter pill to swallow.

Be careful out there

Buying from highly reputable sellers isn’t always a guarantee of getting genuine as-described products, though. We have previously reported on some eyebrow-raising examples of online purchases going very badly even with big-name online retailers involved. In 2022, someone had a pretty bad experience with a Newegg purchased Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card – receiving metal blocks instead. Earlier in the same year, the firm came under fire for its open-box motherboard and CPU returns.

As recently as December 2023, we also felt compelled to highlight the fact that AMD Radeon RX 7000 series GPU scams were a persistent problem on Amazon. Online buyers have to be really careful wherever they decide to shop and take precautions with their judgment and communications. For big-ticket items, it might also be worth recording events like receiving parcels and unboxing them.

Nvidia has officially launched the GeForce RTX 4090D, a new China-exclusive RTX 4090 counterpart that meets the United States' export regulations. The new GPU comes with 14,592 CUDA cores, 24GB of GDDR6X memory, a 384-bit wide memory bus, and a 425W power consumption rating. Pricing is the same as Nvidia's Best GPU the RTX 4090, at ¥12,999 ($1,828).

Compared to the outgoing RTX 4090, the new RTX 4090D has been neutered on two fronts, CUDA cores and power draw. The RTX 4090D features a 12.8% reduction in CUDA cores going from 16,384 down to 14,592 (128 SMs to 114 SMs), and a minute 5.9% reduction in power draw down to 425W from 450W. All other core specifications remain the same between the two, including the 384-bit wide bus, 24GB of GDDR6X memory, and 2.52 GHz boost clock. The only exception is the base clock, which has been brought up slightly to 2.28 GHz from 2.23 GHz.

The new consumer RTX 40 series GPU was made in response to the United States' latest export regulations which forced Nvidia to stop selling the standard RTX 4090 and other AI/HPC-focused Nvidia GPUs to the Chinese market due to geopolitics. Under the new rules, chip-makers such as Nvidia can only ship out semiconductor processors that don't exceed specific performance metrics set by the United States.

The performance metric used is known as Total Processing Power (TPP) which is calculated by the maximum compute for a given bit-length using TFLOPs or TOPS multiplied by the number of bits. The maximum threshold allowed by the U.S. export regulations is 4,800. It just so happened that the RTX 4090's performance level in this benchmark is 10% higher (5,286) than the regulation limit, which is how the 4090 ended up on the ban list.

Direct performance comparisons between the 4090D and 4090 have not been published by Nvidia or any of its AIB partners, but it goes without saying that this new RTX 4090D features a TPP rating of exactly 4,800 or lower, so it can be sold to China. This new model will be China-exclusive, and won't be coming to other countries (at least for now). We could see the 4090D make an appearance elsewhere,  in other sanctioned states, but that is the only way it is likely to show up outside of China. The sole purpose of the RTX 4090D is to bypass the U.S. export regulations and give China the fastest consumer GPU that regulations allow, plain and simple.

Acer's Predator Orion X prebuilt comes with a unique liquid-cooled GeForce RTX 4090 that ultimately performs worse than air-cooled models, according to an in-depth review from KitGuru. Although liquid cooling is generally considered better than air cooling, Acer ran into design limitations with its custom 4090, which integrates the radiator into the graphics card itself, rather than it being external and mounted to the PC case like with a normal AIO liquid cooler.

The liquid-cooled 4090 made by Acer isn't all that different from a normal, air-cooled 4090. An air cooler uses a baseplate and copper heatpipes filled with fluid to siphon the heat of a processor (like a GPU) to the heatsink composed of metal fins, which are cooled by fans. All Acer has done is replace the copper heatpipes with a pump that moves liquid from the baseplate to the radiator, which is the cooler's heatsink.

As KitGuru has found, this doesn't really work out for Acer's RTX 4090. At nearly 76 degrees Celsius, it was by far the hottest GeForce RTX 4090 tested in the analysis, even hotter than the Asus TUF Gaming RTX 4090, which registered just above 71 degrees Celsius with its quiet BIOS enabled. But memory thermals are more concerning, as the GDDR6X chips on Acer's RTX 4090 hit 96 degrees Celsius. The next hottest GPU was Nvidia's own GeForce RTX 4090 Founder's Edition at a relatively cool 84 degrees Celsius.

These two problems led to Acer's RTX 4090 performing worse than any other, though not by a massive margin. With an average clock speed of 2,644 MHz, it was slower than MSI's RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X, which on its high-performance BIOS profile hit 2,820MHz. Not a huge difference, but with a liquid cooler you expect to see top-end frequencies.

Conventional wisdom generally says liquid cooling is better than air cooling, so what happened? Well, part of the problem is certainly that a 270mm radiator just isn't enough to cool an RTX 4090, which is a 450-watt GPU. However, MSI's Suprim Liquid X model uses just a 240mm radiator, so clearly there's something else at play. KitGuru speculates that the baseplate might not have been designed well, and that the thermal pads used for the memory were too thick.

Nvidia's latest Version R535 U9 driver (537.99) for professional graphics cards lists an unannounced RTX 5880 Ada Generation graphics card, as noticed by HXL. Given the fact that the model number of the product is so close to the flagship RTX 5880 Ada Generation board for professional visualization, it's reasonable to speculate that this is based on the AD102 GPU, but with reduced performance.

As Nvidia can no longer ship high-performance AD102-based graphics cards to China due to the latest U.S. export rules, a logical assumption would be that the RTX 5880 Ada is a cut-down version of the RTX 6000 Ada specifically tailored for the Chinese market. However, it may not be the case as Nvidia hasn't commented on the matter, and . The R535 U9 driver with the RTX 5880 Ada is available both from Nvidia China and Nvidia Global websites.

Based on the AD102 GPU with 18,176 CUDA cores and 48 GB of 384-bit GDDR6 memory, Nvidia's RTX 6000 Ada Generation graphics card is extremely powerful and its shipments to China are now restricted (though it's still listed at Nvidia's Chinese website). Meanwhile, the company's second most powerful graphics board for professional visualization market is the RTX 5000 Ada Generation board — an AD102-powered product with 12,800 CUDA cores with 32 GB of 256-bit GDDR6 memory.

The gap between the range-topping RTX 6000 Ada, which sells for $6,800, and the second-best RTX 5000 Ada, which has an MSRP of $4,000, is perhaps just a bit too wide for Nvidia to leave it unfilled, so the RTX 5880 Ada Generation could be that filler not only for the Chinese market, but for the global market as well.

For now, neither Nvidia's global nor the company's Chinese websites list the RTX 5880 Ada Generation graphics card. You can see the above specifications, and pay particular note to the "Total Processing Power" (TPP) and "Performance Density" (PD) rows. Those are key elements in the latest U.S. export restrictions. Any GPU with more than a 4,800 TPP score is now subject to export controls, and the RTX 6000 Ada obviously falls into that category with a TPP of 5,828.

The second aspect of the restrictions, PD, doesn't come into play as these are not technically data center parts. However, it's interesting to note that if the regulations were to change and begin considering that factor — because the U.S. Department of Commerce clearly isn't done tweaking its rules — the RTX 4500 Ada and above all have a PD rating of more than 6.0.

We don't have any detailed specifications for the RTX 5880 Ada yet, so for now we can only wonder whether this is a China-only device, or a product that will sit between the RTX 5000 Ada and the RTX 6000 Ada. Either way, Nvidia is preparing to release yet another AD102-based ProViz graphics board.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090D— the company's gaming graphics card designed specifically for Chinese market — is on track and its specifications are getting shape, according to recent leaks. Given the fact that the product has never been confirmed by Nvidia as well as the stance of the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding powerful GPUs for China, we can never be sure either about the specs or about the launch of the product at all. But TGP and clock leaks from @Zed__Wang and BenchLife.info we have some information. As ever, take leaks with a pinch of salt.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090D is based on the AD102-250 GPU, and likely to have a base clock of 2280 MHz (up from 2230 MHz on the regular RTX 4090D) and posible boost clock of 2520 MHz (same as on the regular RTX 4090), according to @Zed__Wang, a renowned leaker. These clocks heavily suggest that the AD102-250 graphics processing unit will come with a reduced number of CUDA cores and other units, though we are speculating here. 

Now, with similar clocks and reduced number of CUDA cores, a GeForce RTX 4090D could match the performance of an RTX 4090 if overclocked (remember that the AD102 GPU was designed to be overclockable). So, to avoid this, the graphics card will come with total graphics power (TGP) capped at 425W (down from 450W in case of the original RTX 4090) and its overclocking capabilities will be locked, according to BenchLife.info.

The website reports that that Nvidia's add-in-board (AIB) partners are expected to receive samples of the AD102-250 GPU for testing this week, which means that we are going to see leaked specifications of the GeForce RTX 4090D shortly.

Now, while it is plausible that Nvidia is interested in making its $1599 graphics card available in China again,  and is willing to cut-down the performance of its AD102 below the threshold set by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It should be noted that the latter is unwilling to let Chinese have powerful GPUs that could be used for AI training or even technical computing at all. To that end, take any information about Nvidia's RTX 4090D or datacenter-oriented GPUs specifically tailored for China with a large grain of salt as the U.S. DoC could issue export rules and ban exports of these products to China even before their formal launch.

Overclocking expert Der8auer has provided some guidance on how to achieve 1000 frames per second (fps) in Counter-Strike 2. He used a potent mix of one of the best CPUs and probably the most powerful consumer gaming GPU to achieve his lofty goal – as well as several liters of liquid nitrogen. However, it is important to note that he set himself some strict guidelines: the game must run at 1080p, no less, and CS2’s graphics settings must be realistic for a pro eSports gamer.

Counter-Strike 2 is a game that is very well known for benefiting from the fastest frame rates. However, we aren’t at the stage where 1000 fps with realistic pro eSports settings is required (or possible) in a competitive tournament… Der8auer conducted some research to find what kinds of settings eSports pros used in this game. While many graphics quality settings can indeed be pared back, he noted some finer points. For example, using high settings for shadows seemed to be one of the favored choices among CS2 devotees. Thus, Der8auer admitted that his fps figures could in theory be higher, but they would then be using unrealistic settings for pro CS2 gamers.

The PC components that were used for this 1000 fps CS2 gaming session were as follows:

• Intel Core i9-14900K – retail sample, claimed to be ‘average’
• Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore motherboard – which has an LN2 mode in the BIOS
• LN2 coolant pot
• 2 liters of liquid nitrogen
• Elmore OC panel monitor
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card

To provide a performance baseline, Der8auer first ran the above system with an AIO liquid cooler and disabled e-cores, achieving 6 GHz. CS2 ran at up to about 800 fps using this overclocking setting.

Now the LN2 overclocking tests could begin. With temperatures down to -150 degrees Celsius, Der8auer found his 14900K processor could run at a stable 7.4 GHz (P-cores only). So, CS2 was fired up (with OBS screen recorder software) and the performance result was considerably better. The LN2 OC system achieved 1080p eSports settings CS2 gaming performance of about 950 fps on average.

Somewhat disappointed with his 14900K sample, the overclocking expert borrowed a better-binned chip that was available at the Asus OC lab. We then saw Der8auer progress, with some help from overclocker Safedisk, to 7.5 GHz, with various other refinements to memory timings. Subsequently, he achieved his goal, with CS2 performance remaining consistently above 1000 fps.

Pushing to 7.8 GHz, no real noticeable fps increase was observed, so it was thought that the mighty GPU had become the limiting factor. He didn’t want to lower graphics settings for more fps, as that would defeat the point of the video. Remember, he wanted realistic competitive eSports 1080p settings and 1000 fps or better.

Some further OC exploration with the binned 14900K CPU was surprisingly held back due to the system’s PCIe Gen5 SSD overheating. A sample with no heatsink had been installed, but after pointing a cutesy hand fan the SSD system stability returned and Der8auer managed to achieve a stable all-core 8.1 GHz overclock (see gallery above).

Der8auer recalls that as he was working on his 14900K overclocking and CS2 gaming video in Taiwan, he wasn’t alone. Also in attendance, in the Asus OC labs, were the aforementioned Safedisk, Elmor, Shamino, and Massman. This heavyweight team was pushing another 14900K to the max, this time using liquid helium. They tortured their sample at nearly -250 degrees Celsius and reached beyond 9 GHz on a single P-core. Der8auer didn’t think it was unrealistic to see an OC (of the same chip) over 10 GHz in the future.

In October we reported upon a Core i9-14900K setting a new record in CS2 with an incredible 1310 fps. This was achieved with the processor running between 7.5 GHz and 8 GHz on Gigabyte's Z790 Aorus Tachyon X motherboard. We aren’t sure what graphics / quality settings were used during that attempt.

As we reported yesterday, Nvidia is reportedly building a version of its GeForce RTX 4090 product — presumably called the GeForce RTX 4090D. This version will comply with the latest U.S. export rules concerning hardware that could be used for artificial intelligence. Today, renowned hardware leaker @Zed_Wang revealed that the graphics cards will allegedly be based on the AD102-250 graphics processor. As this is a leak, take the news with some salt.

The GeForce RTX 4090D could theoretically make our list of the best graphics cards, if it's not limited to China. While the specs are unknown, we can hazard a guess that it will outperform the GeForce RTX 4080 but not reach RTX 4090 levels of performance. The RTX 4090 carries the AD102-300/AD102-301 GPU. The RTX 4090D looks set to be based on a significantly cut-down AD102-250 processor. At this point it's hard to say how the GeForce RTX 4090D will stack up against possible GeForce RTX 4080 Ti or GeForce RTX 4080 Super products, but it will likely sit higher up the GPU benchmarks hierarchy. It will also likely cost quite a bit more that a 4080 refresh.

Nvidia needs to lower the FP8 and FP16 performance of the GeForce RTX 4090 by at least 10% in order to reduce its AI potential, and decrease its TPP score from 5,286 to lower than 4,800 points. Nvidia cannot just cut down the Tensor core FP8 and FP16 processing, as the number of Tensor cores is tied to the number of SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors). How exactly Nvidia will choose to configure its AD102-250 to comply with the U.S. export rules is currently unknown, though there are multiple possibilities.

On the one hand, the company could reduce the number of SMs, CUDA cores, and Tensor cores on the GeForce RTX 4090D, which would increase product yields and cut costs. However, GPUs with a reduced number of active units tend to be good overclockers, so any 'lost' AI performance could be 'restored' in that fashion. Nvidia would either have to significantly cut the number of CUDA cores and risk that factory-overclocked GeForce RTX 4080 Super/RTX 4080 Ti would overlap with these parts, or moderately cut down the number of CUDA cores and prohibit heavy overclocking.

Besides the exact specifications, we also don't know precisely when the RTX 4090D is set to emerge. The earlier the better, of course, but the company will have to test everything before shipping to play it safe with the U.S. government. We suspect Nvidia will likely release the new device well before February 10, the Chinese New Year, as factories tend to shut down for a couple of weeks to celebrate.

Nvidia's Chinese website continues to list workstation-grade RTX 6000 Ada solutions. The RTX 6000 Ada is the company's most powerful graphic card and is subject to export restrictions to China (and some other countries), according to the latest U.S. trade rules. In fact, with a compact blower cooler and 48 GB of memory, the RTX 6000 Ada is a very good fit for artificial intelligence training. In contrast, Nvidia and its partners no longer sell the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in China, VideoCardz noticed, and the company has removed any mention of the consumer product from its Chinese website. 

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 — one of the best graphics cards around — is based on the AD102 graphics processing unit and has a total processing performance score of 5,280 (based on its FP8 Tensor FLOPS performance of 660 TFLOPS), which makes it an export-licensable item (as its TPP is higher than 4,800). To ship GeForce RTX 4090 products to China, Nvidia and its partners now have to obtain an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Such license applications are reviewed with a presumption of denial, so it looks like Nvidia would rather not sell its GeForce RTX 4090 in China.

With the above in mind, it is strange that the company continues to offer its RTX 6000 Ada Generation graphics board for professionals in China. This solution features the AD102 graphics processing unit with 18,176 CUDA cores enabled; its total processing performance score is 5,828 (based on its 728.5 FP8 TFLOPS performance without sparsity). In fact, this graphics card carries 48 GB of memory, so it is actually a better fit for AI training and inference than the consumer-oriented GeForce RTX 4090.

What is perhaps more important is that Nvidia's RTX 6000 Ada Generation comes with a compact blower cooling system, which makes it easy to use in data center environments and which makes it useful both for AI training / inference jobs as well as high-performance computing, as it supports FP64 without constraints.  

It is unclear why Nvidia still lists its RTX 6000 Ada Generation graphics card on its Chinese website. Perhaps the company intends to apply for an export license to keep selling this $6,800 product in the the People's Republic, or maybe the company's partners have plenty of those cards in China already and therefore will be able to continue selling stock for some time.

HandBrake Team this week released HandBrake 1.7.0 which adds support for hardware-accelerated AV1 transcoding on the latest graphics processors from AMD and Nvidia. As a result, HandBrake 1.7.0 now supports hardware-accelerated AV1 transcoding on all popular modern GPUs, including those from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. In addition, the new version of HandBrake also quadruples the performance of SVT-AV1 encoding on Apple Silicon-based Macs thanks to CPU optimizations. 

Starting from version 1.7.0, HandBrake supports the AMD VCN AV1 encoder that is used by AMD's Radeon 7000-series graphics processors (RDNA 3), as well as the Nvidia 8th Gen NVENC encoder built into GeForce 40-series (Ada Lovelace) graphics chips. Both these GPU families are used in some of the best graphics cards. Previously HandBrake 1.6.0 gained support for Intel's Xe AV1 encoder supported by Xe and Arc-branded GPUs. Therefore, HandBrake can take advantage of hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding on all popular contemporary GPUs, except those integrated into Apple Silicon processors. 

HandBrake is one of the world's most popular transcoding programs. Its main advantage is that it supports virtually all widespread codecs on all hardware and software platforms. HandBrake's software-based SVT-AV1 is a very efficient encoder that supports all kinds of CPUs, which means that HandBrake can run on virtually everything. Meanwhile, hardware-accelerated processing is both faster and more power efficient, which brings loads of advantages, particularly on laptops running on battery power. 

Since version 1.7.0 is a major release for HandBrake, it brings loads of important improvements and a full list can be found over at GitHub. While improved support for HDR or added support for Apple VideoToolbox are significant enhancements in the newest version of the software, perhaps the most important tweak is the added support for drag and drop of multiple files at once on Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows-based systems. 

While the Nvidia RTX 4090 currently reigns as the fastest GPU among the best graphics cards, sitting in the pole position on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, prices for it continue to climb. We wrote about the 10% increase since October just last week (the details are repeated below), but prices are now nearing the $2,000 mark on the cheapest cards. There's still a single Zotac RTX 4090 for $1,899 at Newegg, but the next cheapest is $1,999, and the next cheapest after that kicks the price up to $2,149. What exactly is going on?

As discussed previously, the RTX 4090 is now subject to China export restrictions starting November 17 — that's today. In short, any Nvidia card using the AD102 chip is now on the export list. Restricting these GPUs from export to China means that assembling 4090 graphics cards in China is also prohibited. Most graphics card companies do their card assembly in China for cost reasons, and so Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY, etc. will all have to shift production of 4090 cards elsewhere — and China-centric brands may have to halt production completely.

There's also the fact that RTX 4090 inventory seems to be drying up. Many 4090 cards are out of stock, and we doubt that's due to increased demand. More probable is that Nvidia and its partners aren't making the cards anymore, or if they are, the costs to assemble the cards (see above) has increased significantly. Halting production on the 4090 would also make a lot of sense if something else is coming down the pipeline.

There's no official word from Nvidia, but the long-rumored RTX 4090 Ti (or perhaps RTX 4090 Super?) may actually come to market. We've been hearing supposed "leaks" about the 4090 Ti (sometimes also called the new Titan RTX) for most of the past year, including numerous shots of a massive quad-slot cooler. Nvidia left room for a higher performance AD102 part when it created the RTX 4090, but perhaps it scrapped the 4-slot design and will simply use the existing 4090 model with additional cores and cache enabled. Given the melting 16-pin connector snafu of the 4090, an RTX 4090 Ti with a 600W or higher TGP seems like asking for trouble, so Nvidia may also stick with a 450W TGP.

We can also cynically point out that Black Friday GPU sales are right around the corner. We don't usually see a lot of great deals on graphics cards, but we often see prices trend upward right before the sales kick off. That GPU that was selling for $600 earlier this year might suddenly jump to $700 for a month or so, only to "go on sale" for $600 again. "Save 14%!" But the above reasons mean that, out of all GPUs, the 4090 is least likely to see the usual price hike and then discount cycle this year.

We can't say for certain how each of the above factors into the RTX 4090 pricing equation, but we do know that 4090 prices have been creeping upward for the past few months. It's possible we'll get a new RTX 4090 Ti priced at the same $1,599 MSRP as the 4090 in the near future. That would be the best-case scenario, frankly. More likely, unfortunately, is that such a card — if it even exists and comes to market — will bump the MSRP up a notch. Those $1,999 RTX 4090 cards may soon become the base model RTX 4090 Ti / Super. Whatever the case, we'll continue to track prices as we wait to see where things end up.

The first rumors about Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 Ti graphics card (aka Titan Ada) emerged months before it launched the GeForce RTX 40-series. Later on, images of its oversized quad-slot cooler leaked into the wild. Eventually the company reportedly decided to cancel the product, which essentially morphed it into urban legend status. Prior to today, we've never seen the whole GeForce RTX 4090 Titanium package, which was meant to be the best graphics card ever — or at least the fastest. That dream may be dead, which is probably for the best, but the images live on.

A Reddit post earlier today helped to fill in some missing bits and pieces, showing the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti (or Titan Ada — we're still not sure what it was going to be called) in all of its chunky glory. Just like the previously published images, the card featured a printed circuit board oriented perpendicularly to the motherboard slot, with a quad-slot cooling system and presumably still two fans.

Because of the design, display outputs for the card are located in a rather non-standard manner. The device was said to carry a paper label bearing the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti name on it. This somewhat implies that the card was not going to use Titan branding, but would instead bear a more conventional RTX 4090 Ti model number.

When compared to an Nvidia Titan RTX, based on the TU102 graphics processor, the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti indeed looks gigantic — just like the Titans of legend. While gamer4life, the Redditor who published the images of the alleged 4090 Ti, eventually removed them, fortunately VideoCardz was quick enough to save them. This may prove that the product was a real deal and Nvidia (or someone close to Nvidia who supplied the sample to the leaker) asked for the images to be removed.

The real reasons behind Nvidia's decision to cancel the product aren't known, but there's plenty of speculation. The company already has its RTX 6000 Ada Generation graphics card for professionals that uses AD102 with 18,176 CUDA cores, albeit running at relatively low clocks (up to 2505 MHz) and featuring a 300W TGP.

Nvidia could offer something similar for the consumer market, but with higher clocks and higher performance. That naturally would push power use up, possibly way up, and given the melting 16-pin fiasco, perhaps Nvidia decided to just stick to its GeForce RTX 4090 as its range-topping offering. Note that there are still rumors of a potential RTX 4090 Ti circulating, without the monster quad-slot cooler. We'll see if that potential card actually sees the light of day in the coming months.

A video of a skateboard fashioned from a set of wheels and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, one of the best graphics cards, has been shared on social media. This extremely odd mash-up is touted by Twitterer VX-Underground as the ultimate status symbol, throwing shade on brands like Lamborghini and Balenciaga. From the short clip, which you can watch if you expand the tweet below, it also looks like the triple-fan skateboard rides pretty well.

A skateboard deck has to be resilient yet offer some flexibility and spring. When we first saw the behemoths that Nvidia and partners were lining up for would-be RTX 4090 customers, little did we know that these graphics cards would work so well in place of the usual rugged plywood plank. Many RTX 4090 users enjoy ultra-smooth AAA PC grind-fests on the Ada Lovelace flagship, but it would be a surprise to see one of these cards survive a skateboard grinding session.

Of course, the video embedded above has been the subject of much mirth. People are joking about the frame rate of the RTX 4090 skateboarding experience or whether DLSS 3.5 could make it run faster. Others joked about whether the fans could be turned face down for a hoverboard, or if it could be powered up for RGB effects.

However, water-cooling aficionado and Redditor Ashley Said What, the original uploader of the video, was quick to counter accusations of entitlement or extravagance. No RTX 4090 was harmed to create this rad skateboard. The Redditor explained that the cooling shroud was just one salvaged “from the e-waste recycling pile at work.” The donor card got a nice new water block before being fitted to a customer PC system.

The saga continues over a year after the first problems with GeForce RTX 4090's melted 12VHPWR connectors were reported. A NorthridgeFix repairman claims he must fix about a hundred GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards with failed connectors every month. He insists the connector failures are not user error, but issues with the connector design.

"We get about 20 to 25 [GeForce RTX] 4090 [graphics cards] a week," the repairman said in a NorthbridgeFix YouTube video."

This volume highlights just how common the issue is with this model. To illustrate how many GeForce RTX 4090 graphics boards come to repairs, the repairman said he had to get a half-mask respirator and an air purifier to protect his health when he fixes the melted connectors.

"We get them in so much that I bought myself this Hiroshima mask, so I do not have to smell the burn on those conductors," he said. "It smells like fireworks times ten. It cannot be healthy to keep smelling burnt connectors." 

Back in November 2022, Nvidia said that it was aware of 50 cases of melted GeForce RTX 4090 power connectors and that the standard issue was that they were not fully plugged into the graphics card, which essentially meant that it was a user error, not a failure of the connector.

Although Nvidia denies that the issues with melting power connectors on some of its GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards lie in the peculiarities of the 12VHPWR auxiliary PCIe power connector itself, PCI SIG has now redesigned the power plug. The new 12V-2x6 addresses the main drawback of the 12VHPWR, its fixing force, and alters other aspects of the specification. This suggests that the 12VHPWR connector specification was so flawed that PCI SIG had to redesign it.

"So now it is safe to say the [GeForce RTX] 4090 melted connector is not a user problem," the repairman said. "We discussed this many times in the past, but I want to mention one last time that this is not a user error."

Edit, 11/12/2023: Corrected title.

Nvidia is reportedly rushing shipments of RTX 4090s to China ahead of expected export restrictions, according to three separate reports. The company's add-in-board (AIB) partners are hard at work producing RTX 4090 products for the Chinese market ahead of Nov. 16. However, it is unclear whether exports of the SKU will actually be restricted.

"Nvidia has been shipping tons of AD102 for [add-in-cards] this week to manufacture as [many] RTX 4090 as possible before the original restriction date of RTX 4090 [exports to] China," wrote @Zed_Wang, a well-known hardware leaker who tends to have accurate information about Nvidia. "It is still unclear whether the restriction will become true or not. But all AICs are at their full power in producing RTX 4090, regardless of that."

BenchLife and MyDrivers report that, based on information from Nvidia's AIB partners, the U.S. government will require an export license to ship RTX 4090s to China starting Nov. 17. This would essentially restrict 4090 sales to the country as the Department of Commerce's (DoC) Bureau of Industry and Security would then review license applications with a presumption of denial. As a result, GPU makers are speeding up production of RTX 4090s for China before the restriction potentially happens. 

On Oct. 16, the DoC's Bureau of Industry and Security revealed plans to require Nvidia and other companies to get an export license to ship their A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S, and GeForce RTX 4090 products to China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, since their performance levels exceeded certain metrics. That rule was expected to come into effect after a 30-day grace period, on Nov. 17.

But on Oct. 23, the U.S. government notified Nvidia about the immediate enactment of the export rules for A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S products. The absence of Nvidia's L40 and RTX 4090 from the list stirred controversy. This could mean that the L40 and the RTX 4090 have been removed from the list completely, or it could mean that export restrictions will proceed as planned, taking effect on Nov. 17.

As of writing, Nvidia has not responded to a request for comment. For now it's unclear whether Nvidia and its partners will be able to ship the RTX 4090 to China (and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Vietnam) after Nov. 17 without an export license.

When we first heard rumors about Nvidia's plan to add the GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card to its fleet, we considered it unlikely. The company feels pretty comfortable from a competition point of view and has not used the 'Super' brand for quite a while. But evidence mounts that the green company is prepping its GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics board. 

The PCI ID for Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card was listed yesterday in a PCI ID repository. Realix, the developer of the popular diagnostic suite HWiNFO, declared the addition of GeForce RTX 4080 Super as an upcoming change for the next version of the program. Typically, diagnostic software developers receive information about forthcoming hardware well in advance, so we can consider this 'listing' as further proof that the RTX 4080 Super is incoming. This is not rock-solid proof, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Super is allegedly built on Nvidia's AD103 graphics processor, just like the regular version. However, the exact configuration of the GPU remains uncertain. It could operate with all of its 10,240 CUDA cores enabled, maintain the GeForce RTX 4080's 9,728 CUDA cores with increased clock speeds, or possess a different setup. In any case, it promises to be one of the best graphics cards around when it arrives. When it will be released is another question, though it would be logical for Nvidia to release it in time for the holiday season.

Speculating about the specifications of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Super is challenging at this stage. It is anticipated to be positioned above the standard GeForce RTX 4080 but below the top-tier GeForce RTX 4090. So, a minor performance uplift compared to its predecessor would suffice to sell it at a higher price since the gap between RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 is huge. Nvidia might also choose to release the GeForce RTX 4080 Super exclusively to OEMs, catering to PC manufacturers who prefer having new product versions annually to highlight improvements over previous models. 

In any case, Nvidia appears to be in the preparation phase for the product, which might end up a retail model or exclusively available as an add-in-board from selected PC manufacturers. Semi-official sources, while somewhat reliable, should not be considered conclusive as they are unofficial, and companies' plans, including product launches, are subject to change or cancellation.

Nvidia may be prepping mysterious GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card as a well-known PCI ID repository now lists such a product, which suggests that the device has been listed in a driver, Linux patch, GPU-Z validation, or BIOS. The product may end up as an OEM-only add-in-board available from select PC makers, but at least Nvidia seems to be prepping it, which somewhat corroborates the ongoing rumors that GeForce RTX 4080 Super is incoming. This is still a rumor and as such we must take the news with a pinch of salt.

Nvidia recently added 10de:2703 (NVIDIA_DEV.2703), an entry described as GeForce RTX 4080 Super to its R515 test driver, as noticed by StefanG3D from LaptopVideo2Go. The product is said to be based on Nvidia's AD103 graphics processor, though it is unclear whether the GPU comes with all of its 10,240 CUDA cores enabled, retains GeForce RTX 4080's 9,728 CUDA cores yet adopts higher clocks, or has another configuration. 

Now, while semi-official repositories are reliable sources of information, they are not the ultimate truth, not only because they are not official, but because plans can change and companies may cancel certain products because of their launches. The particular listing of the 10de:2703 device designated as GeForce RTX 4080 Super was added by T4CFantacy, who is a TechPowerUp GPU database with access to early GPU BIOS and GPU-Z validations, as noted by VideoCardz. Therefore, it is likely, but not definite that Nvidia and/or its partners are working on products called GeForce RTX 4080 Super. 

At this point it is hard to make guesses about specifications of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Super, though we would imagine that this one would sit above the regular GeForce RTX 4080 but below the GeForce RTX 4090, the best graphics card money can buy. If the unit offers a slight performance upgrade versus its predecessor, it will be good enough to further solidify its position on the market of desktop discrete graphics boards. Meanwhile, the company could make its GeForce RTX 4080 Super an OEM-only product aimed at PC makers who tend to want 'new' SKUs every year to show the difference between contemporary and last year's offerings. Anyhow, for now take the information about Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 with a grain of salt. 

In addition to the alleged GeForce RTX 4080 Super, the R515 test driver also lists H100 SXM5 96GB AI and HPC GPU for compute. This part will likely use high-density HBM3 or HBM3E memory and let applications access 96 GB of it, up from 80 GB accessible today.

Asus has quietly launched its RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming White OC Edition graphics card that brings together the enhanced reliability that TUF graphics cards are known for, advanced cooling, factory overclocking... and a white façade. The key selling point of the product is still its white outfit.

The Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti White OC Edition graphics card is essentially the same as TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition graphics card, but with a white cooling shroud and backplate. In fact, the white version of the product continues to use a black printed circuit board with a 9+4-phase voltage regulating module that is designed to ensure that Nvidia's AD104 GPU with 7680 CUDA cores gets enough of clean power to maximize its overclocking potential.

Whether dressed in white or black, the GPU can boost to 2760 MHz (which is slightly higher than 2610 MHz stock clocks set by Nvidia), while the 12GB of GDDR6X memory still runs at the standard 21 GT/s data transfer rate.

The add-in-board (AIB) gets power from a 12VHPWR connector that can deliver 450W–600W of power, but Asus doesn't disclose the actual power limit of the TUF Gaming RTX 4070 Ti. Meanwhile, the graphics card is equipped with a massive 3.25-slot three-fan cooling system that looks quite capable of cooling down a heavily overclocked GPU — even if this particular card only features a modest OC.

Keep in mind that end-user overclocking is a lottery (i.e. luck) and the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is still one of the best graphics cards available, even at factory clocks.

One of the extra features of the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti White OC Edition is its extra HDMI output. This AIB comes with three DisplayPort connectors and two HDMI 2.1 connector, which will be useful for those with two HDMI displays. Only four outputs can be used simultaneously, but the HDMI 2.1 ports have up to 42 Gbps of data throughput, compared to just 25.92 Gbps for DisplayPort 1.4a.

Like other modern graphics cards aimed at gamers seeking to create stylish builds, the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti White OC Edition is equipped with addressable RGB LEDs. Still, the lighting on TUF series cards tends to be more subdued than on Asus's ROG Strix line.

Since Asus introduced its first white GeForce RTX 40-series TUF board a few days ago, the AIB is not yet available and we cannot find its recommended price. Meanwhile, the regular (black) version of the product is priced at $849. The least expensive alternative using the same GPU right now is the Zotac RTX 4070 Ti Trinity OC that currently goes for $769.

Maxsun may not be a household name for expensive graphics cards. Still, the company certainly wants to become a prominent player in the field as it just introduced a quite promising GeForce RTX 4090 offering that has a recommended price of $1,999, a significant markup over Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090, one of the best graphics cards, that retail at $1,599.

Maxsun's GeForce RTX 4090 MegaGamer OC 24GB graphics card is based on Nvidia's AD102 GPU with 16,384 CUDA cores running at up to 2,580 MHz at an up to 450W power consumption, which is a moderate 2.4% overclock versus the green company's recommended boost clock. Meanwhile, the memory speed of the card remained untouched, so it transfers data at a 21 GT/s rate.

A 2.4% maximum GPU boost clock increase is, of course, a very modest increase at best, but it looks like the main selling point of the graphics board is not its out-of-box factory overclock but rather its overclocking potential. To maximize the capabilities of its MGG products, Maxsun uses custom-printed circuit boards with an enhanced voltage regulating module (VRM). In addition, the company equipped its GeForce RTX 4090 MegaGamer OC 24GB graphics card with an oversized cooling system featuring five fans: three on the front and two tiny fans on its top (or on its side, depending on how you look at this).

While five fans improve cooling, it is unclear how loud they are. Typically, small high-pressure fans produce a lot of noise, but we have no noise level numbers of the GeForce RTX 4090 MegaGamer OC 24GB graphics card, so we can only make guesses now.

As for display outputs, the GeForce RTX 4090 MegaGamer OC 24GB configuration is pretty typical: it has three DisplayPorts and one HDMI.

Being a Chinese company, Maxsun makes no secret that its GeForce RTX 4090 MegaGamer OC will not be available globally. In fact, given that Nvidia has to obtain an export license from the U.S. government to supply its GeForce RTX 4090 to a Chinese entity, we have concerns about whether the product will be available widely at all, but this is an entirely different story.

Finding an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 in China has become dramatically more difficult and more costly, seemingly overnight. Yesterday, we reported on the latest round of US government restrictions making the RTX 4090 too powerful for export to China. We mused over the possibility of short supplies and pricing action. Today, VideoCardz surveyed numerous Chinese online retailers and found stocks of RTX 4090 cards had either evaporated or were marked up to double their launch price levels.

The latest US export rules regarding exports of high-performance processors cover Nvidia’s AD102 GPU, as found in one of the best graphics cards available today – the GeForce RTX 4090. Its bandwidth and compute power both exceed arbitrary limits set by the US. Thus, from Nov 16 when these new controls are applied, the most premium GPU pick for Chinese gamers will probably be the RTX 4080.

Though the export controls aren’t yet in effect – there's nearly a month left – retailers have been quick to benefit from consumer fears of scarcity. Videocardz shared five Chinese eTailer screenshots and reports that most popular retailers are completely out of stock of RX 4090s. Nvidia’s own store selling Founders Edition cards has no RTX 4090 listings, says VideoCardz.

Retailers with stock remaining are commonly charging double the RTX 4090 launch price in China. There are even reports of some outlets pitching these flagship consumer GPUs at quadruple the launch price.

Yesterday we were wondering about how China-based Nvidia partners like Colorful would service worldwide customers wanting an Nvidia flagship graphics card. Unlike companies such as Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI, Colorful has no out-of-China manufacturing facilities. Zotac may face a similar problem.

Perhaps the answer for Chinese PC enthusiasts and companies like Colorful and Zotac will be delivered by Nvidia with a GPU design that outclasses the RTX 4080 but which will limbo under the US sanctions with regard to memory and processing. Crafting custom GPUs for the Chinese isn't a wholly new idea; we saw it most recently with AMD’s Golden Rabbit Edition cards. The performance restrictions might make a modified RTX 4090 for the China market more like those LHR cards from the days of crypto-hysteria.

Earlier in the week we observed GeForce RTX 4090 prices were creeping up in the US. We saw that prices of AIB partner RTX 4090 cards had increased by $50 over the past month, with similar increases in Europe. It is difficult to predict what will happen with pricing in the future, but supplies of RTX 4090 cards elsewhere could improve with China out of the picture.

Under the terms of the latest export rules imposed by the U.S. government, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia can no longer ship a number of their high-performance processors to China and a number of other countries without an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. In fact, the restrictions are so severe that shipments of Nvidia's AD102 processors are also restricted, which may have an impact on the supply of GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards.

Given the demand for Nvidia's AI GPUs across the globe, the company does not expect its financial results in the near term to be affected by the new export rules. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how these new export rules affect the production and prices of GeForce RTX 4090-based graphics cards, which are generally made in China. In a bid to comply with the new export rules, Nvidia will have to initiate production of GeForce RTX 4090 and other AD102-based products outside of China.

Transferring production to Taiwan is perhaps not a problem for the vast majority of brands as the most of them are headquartered in Taiwan. There is one big exception, though. Colorful, which is one of Nvidia's major customers and which happens to be one of the world's largest graphics card manufacturers, only operates in China. Nvidia may attempt to supply as many AD102 GPUs to its partner as possible in the coming weeks, though it remains to be seen how this affects the supply of GeForce RTX 4090 products in other countries. 

Starting from November 16, 2023, Nvidia will be unable to ship its A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S, and GeForce RTX 4090 cards and modules for AI and HPC computing to China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam without an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. 

All the aforementioned products, except the GeForce RTX 4090, are data center GPUs for AI, HPC, and cloud applications. The GeForce RTX 4090 is the best graphics card money can buy, assuming price isn't a limiting factor, but since the new restrictions curb exports of high-performance processors in general, it falls under the new regulations. 

"The licensing requirement may impact the Company's ability to complete development of products in a timely manner, support existing customers of covered products, or supply customers of covered products outside the impacted regions, and may require the Company to transition certain operations out of one or more of the identified countries," a statement by Nvidia in its filing with the SEC reads.

A report citing several PC hardware stores in Tokyo raises concerns about an impending shortage of Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, particularly at the high end. Japan's ITmedia PC User has surveyed several electronics stores in Tokyo's famous Akihabara Electric Town district, and elsewhere, with the conclusion that "the stock of cards equipped with GeForce RTX 4090/4080 is thinning across the city."

If nothing else, the above-linked report signals that there is something of a supply / demand imbalance in play. It would be of greater concern if the supplies of higher-end RTX 40 family graphics cards were seemingly inadequate due to some strategic production decision by Nvidia and partners.

We know Nvidia is doing very nicely from the AI boom. So far we haven't observed any fallout on the consumer side of things. In other words, the AI GPU boom isn't seen to be affecting consumer GPU pricing like the crypto boom(s) did. However, business is business, and if Nvidia can rake in more cash from prioritizing AI GPU customers, then it would naturally do so.

Returning to the new report from the Japanese brick-and-mortar retailers, retail back orders are said to be longer for GPUs priced in the JP ¥ 250,000 range. That would translate to US $1,670 today. One store owner thought the problem was a "worldwide supply shortage." The same person theorized that shortages might be intentional so Nvidia and partners can offload RTX 30 stocks.

Another PC outlet in Akihabara said that it sees high demand for the flagship RTX 4090, as well as the RTX 4070 Ti. Nevertheless, this store manager is "deliberately stocking up on RTX 4080 cards," as the time will come when this GPU isn't overlooked.

What About the US?

At the time of writing, the likes of Amazon and Newegg appear to have ample stocks of GeForce RTX 4090 models. Browsing the retail sites today reveals cards ranging from the most basic reference spec models to AiO cooler equipped and premium models from various brands.

Japan's ITmedia PC User report advises those interested in picking up one of the best graphics cards for gaming to keep an eye on stocks and trends. We could say the same to US residents. If you are interested in a top-end Nvidia GPU, but are waiting to pull the trigger, always watch the market carefully for price movements and stock levels.

CableMod introduced its original 12VHPWR angled adapter promising that it would solve overheating and melting issues surrounding Nvidia's adapter, but its aftermarket adapters appeared to also be prone to failures. Recently the company rolled out version 1.1 of its 12VHPWR angled adapters that adopt the new PCI SIG CEM 5.1 specification.

CableMod's 12VHPWR V1.1 (12V-2x6) angled adapter offers CEM5.1 compliance and is said to offer an improved friction-fit of the male connector which removes the wiggle between PCB and male connector. The device costs $39.90/€39.90 and is designed to solve issues with overheating and melting 12VHPWR dongles and adapters, both from makers of graphics cards and CableMod itself.

The updated PCI SIG 5.1 (12V-2×6) plug presents several modifications when compared to the original 12VHPWR connector. Firstly, the depth of the power terminal has been expanded from 4.2 mm to 4.45 mm. In addition, the sideband pin array's opening has been widened, moving from the previous measurements of 1.6 mm × 9.3 mm to 1.70 mm × 9.4 mm. One of the most notable changes, however, is the reduction of the sense pin length from 4 mm to 2.5 mm, ensuring that the power header is fully integrated with the connector. 

This adjustment is especially vital for safety reasons. If power connector is not adequately connected, the power supply avoids entering high power modes. This prevention mechanism stops potential overheating and possible melting situations, especially when a graphics card is drawing considerable energy. 

In response to the issues with the 12VHPWR connector, the PCI SIG set clear specifications for the new PCI SIG 5.1 (12V-2×6) design. They mandated a minimum current rating of 9.2A per pin, ensuring a temperature rise limit doesn't exceed 30 degrees Celsius above the ambient temperature at 12V DC. These connectors will bear an embossed H mark. Moreover, even if a single pin can manage a current of 9.2A, the entire assembly's current should not cross 55A RMS in either direction. The design also specifies the use of 16 AWG wires and pins and mandates that the connector can resist a pulling force of a minimum of 45.00N. 

One of the interesting things about the new 12VHPWR V1.1 (12V-2x6) adapter is that CableMod gives owners of the original adapter a $39.90/€39.90 coupon to buy themselves the new version of the device. Essentially, owners of the version 1.0 can get themselves a 12VHPWR V1.1 (12V-2x6) adapter for free.

The Lenovo Legion 9i's much vaunted liquid cooler has been tested and found wanting. In brief, YouTuber Dave2D fiddled with his Legion gaming laptop review sample and A / B tested the device with and without the liquid cooling pump connected to power, observing thermals and performance. Sadly, little to no significant worthwhile difference was observed when the pump was powered on.

Lenovo launched the Legion 9i last month, with plans to release this $4,000+ flagship gaming portable later this month. We had a look at it in September, and a few hours ago Dave2D published his review.

It is thought that Lenovo put in a lot of effort to pull something special out of the bag for its new flagship Legion 9i gaming laptop. It sports flagship components inside, an impressive MiniLED display, as well as a unique carbon fiber shell. Furthermore, it was heralded as "the world's first laptop with integrated liquid cooling." This may all have been deemed necessary to boast widespread improvements over the firm's own Legion 7 series.

Creating an effective gaming laptop cooling solution can't be easy, with concentrated amounts of power in such a small space. The Lenovo Legion 9i features powerful processors like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 at 175W, and the Intel Core i9-13980HX. As well as the headlining liquid cooler, it features a triple fan cooling system with several heatpipes to keep your gaming as fast and smooth as possible.

Dave2D revealed that the liquid cooler, designed with Cooler Master's collaboration, is set to power-up by default when sensors read 84 degrees Celsius. When it hits this quite toasty temperature the pump will start pushing its very modest ~10ml of liquid around.

As we noted from our own hands-on time with a demo unit in September, the pipes attached to the pump circle the GPU, over the VRAM modules. Dave2D tested the Legion 9i with and without power to the liquid cooling pump to generate the comparison chart below.

Taking the numbers on face value, you can see a number of interesting things. Firstly, the GPU power draw, fan noise, Time Spy benchmark scores, and observed VRAM junction temperatures are basically unchanged in the A/B testing. The only real change is that it takes the system two or three minutes to hit the 101 degrees Celsius VRAM junction temperature (from cold) when the liquid cooler is working. That time is cut drastically to just over 40 seconds when the pump has had its power cut.

For a gaming laptop designed to support AAA gaming for hours at a time, it would be reasonable to say that the observed liquid cooling behavior isn't useful. Dave2D warns that his A/B testing method could have been more scientific, if he were to replace the liquid cooler loop with an identically sizes / shaped regular heatpipe, for example. Other analysis within the video highlights how the triple fan cooling system has an impact on the keyboard deck and touchpad positioning.

In conclusion, the liquid cooling here might not be much more beneficial to the overall laptop system's performance than an RGB backlit logo spelling "FAST." Lenovo's Legion 9i still has a lot of admirable qualities, but its touted liquid cooling benefit over a similar spec Legion 7 Pro (which is about $1,000 cheaper) doesn't seem very worthwhile.

MSI has quietly introduced its new Ventus Essential series of graphics cards that will complement the company's regular Ventus family of boards (as noticed by @momomo_us). The new Ventus Essential cards will offer almost exactly the same specifications as normal Ventus add-in-boards, but will likely have a different bill-of-materials (BOM), which will make MSI's costs slightly lower.

MSI's Ventus Essential lineup currently consists of the GeForce RTX 4070, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, and GeForce RTX 4090, which rank among the best graphics cards. All boards have the same clocks and cooling systems as standard Ventus cards, but Ventus Essential features two DisplayPort and two HDMI outputs, whereas regular Ventus boards have three DisplayPort and one HDMI output. Essential obviously points to something basic, but this may not be the case.

"It has slight structural improvements over Ventus but mostly the same design/specs," wrote Hassan Mujtaba of WccfTech. Note that MSI does not officially disclose any differences between its Ventus and Ventus Essential graphics boards, so let us try to speculate a little.

The display outputs are an interesting change. Right now, DisplayPort on RTX 40-series cards remains on the DP1.4a spec, which has a maximum data rate of 25.92 Gbps using 8b/10b encoding. HDMI 2.1 meanwhile offers up to 42 Gbps data rates using 16b/18b encoding. That's 62% more bandwidth, which means HDMI 2.1 can output up to 8K 120 Hz using DSC (Display Stream Compression), while DP1.4a tops out at around 8K 72 Hz using DSC. But HDMI typically costs more for licensing than DisplayPort, which makes this particular change a bit odd.

Besides the video ports, modern graphics cards are highly complex devices that use hundreds of components. Custom graphics cards, such as MSI's Ventus series, tend to slightly change the bill-of-materials over their lifetimes because some components may get cheaper and others may disappear from the market. But it looks like MSI wants to concurrently offer Ventus and Ventus Essential parts, possibly with slightly different bundles and slightly different BOMs.

Such an approach allows MSI to be flexible with its costs and offer its GeForce RTX 40-series products at more competitive prices. Of course, it remains to be seen whether these Ventus Essential boards will be significantly cheaper than non-Essential Ventus cardsbut the key point is that with more SKUs the company will be able to pick the right series and produce it if it finds it more suitable.

Asus has finally officially introduced its flagship graphics card: the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090. The board comes with the highest out-of-box AD102 GPU clocks, ultimate tweaking ability, a sophisticated voltage regulating module (VRM), an advanced cooling system, and extreme overclockability. Asus has plenty of reasons to suggest this is the world's best graphics card — and it's got a price to match. The ROG Matrix RTX 4090 carries a recommended price tag of $3,199, which is twice Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 MSRP of $1,599.

The Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 is based on the AD102 GPU with 16,384 CUDA cores that come with a 2700 MHz maximum frequency out-of-box (up from 2520 MHz, recommended by Nvidia). These CUDA cores are mated with 24GB of 21 GT/s GDDR6X memory. The graphics card relies on a custom printed circuit board (PCB) with a 24-phase VRM with high-current power stages and one 12VHPWR connector that can deliver up to 600W of very clean power to the GPU. The PCB has numerous sensors, which allow it to monitor the temperature of the GPU, memory chips, VRM, coils, and even PCB itself. 

The graphics card features an all-in-one cooling system with a custom-engineered cold plate that cools the GPU, memory, and VRM, as well as an embedded pump, 700mm of tubing, and a 360mm radiator. To maximize heat transfer from the graphics processor to the cooler, Asus uses liquid metal thermal interface material (TIM) — an industry first for a GPU. The cooling system also has magnetic, daisy-chainable fans with RGB lighting, which allow for minimal cable clutter.

Premium hardware isn't the only strength of the Asus ROG Matrix RTX 4090. The manufacturer also amplified its GPU Tweak III software with more monitoring and overclocking features that take advantage of the card's extra capabilities and sensors. The program allows the user to set a power target, increase GPU voltage, set the GPU boost clock, adjust the voltage/frequency curve, modify the memory clock, and change the fan speed. Meanwhile, the Thermal Map capability provides real-time temperature readouts across the card, while the new mileage feature tracks the card's usage at different power levels.

An interesting feature is that the card supports Power Detector+, which reads the 12VHPWR connector and measures currents across all power wires to detect any anomalies (advising the user to reseat the cable, if necessary).

"The ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 is an overclocker's dream," says a statement by Asus. "In fact, since this card was unveiled at Computex, it has claimed three World Records and five Global First Place records for a total of seven overclocking records in 3DMark11 Performance, 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme, Unigine Superposition 1080p Xtreme, 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, 3DMark Port Royal, GPUPI v3.3 1B, GPUPI v3.3 32B, and Unigine Superposition 8K Optimized."

Indeed, without any modifications, Asus' ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 broke the 4 GHz GPU clock barrier earlier this year, so the company isn't wrong — this board does appear to be an overclocker's dream. But while it's certainly faster than any other RTX 4090 currently on the market, the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 also costs twice as much as a regular RTX 4090. It'll probably be hard for many to justify spending an extra $1,600 on the extra performance, even if they're into overclocking.

The Asus ROG Matrix RTX 4090 is, obviously, not for everyone. It's a limited-edition product aimed at die-hard overclockers who are looking to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their hardware. It's for people who actually enjoy tweaking their systems to gain a couple of points on a benchmarking test. Naturally, that also makes it perfect for bragging rights.

Asus is set to launch its flagship ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card next week on September 19, 2023. The graphics board was announced at Computex, but the company only shared that it uses an innovative closed-loop cooling system with a liquid metal thermal interface. Meanwhile, the product has already become a legend as it nearly conquered a 4 GHz GPU frequency, an industry's first.

"The wait is almost over," an Asus tweet reads. "Count down to the official launch of our flagship graphics card – the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090."

The Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 is one of the most mysterious products introduced recently. We know it carries Nvidia's AD102 graphics processor and 24 GB of GDDR6X memory. However, Asus has been tight-lipped about out-of-box clocks of both the GPU and SGRAM, instead focusing on its custom printed circuit board with a sophisticated voltage regulating module and its cooling system with Liquid Metal thermal interface.

Plenty of clean power and a powerful cooling system are indeed required for successful overclocking. So, all makers of graphics cards tend to use custom PCBs with powerful VRMs and an all-in-one 360-mm liquid cooling system. What sets the ROG Matrix RTX 4090 graphics card apart is its use of a special ingredient: liquid metal thermal interface material (TIM), which enhances heat transfer from the hot components to the cooling system. While Asus doesn't disclose the specific type of liquid metal TIM employed, such materials are typically composed of gallium or gallium alloys known for their exceptional heat conductivity.

However, utilizing liquid metal thermal interfaces presents certain risks and challenges. These TIMs are electrically conductive, potentially leading to short circuits if not handled with care and precision. Moreover, they can be corrosive to specific metals like aluminum. Despite these challenges, Asus asserts its experience with using liquid metal TIMs in laptops for several years, indicating confidence in their application for graphics cards.

In any case, we already know that the Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 can hit nearly 4 GHz GPU with liquid nitrogen, so we'll learn next week what it is capable of when equipped with its stock cooling system and Liquid Metal TIM. Asus clearly wanted to build the best graphics card possible, so we will find out soon enough whether it has succeeded.

AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT may not be radically better than its predecessor in terms of performance, but it is enough to challenge Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070, which is perhaps why some graphics card manufacturers and retailers are cutting prices of custom GeForce RTX 4070 models by $50 in the U.S.

Currently, Amazon.com, BestBuy, B&H Photo Video, and Newegg have GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards available for $549 from Asus, Gigabyte, and Zotac. The list includes several models:

• Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual at B&H Photo Video.
• Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 WindForce OC at Amazon, Best Buy, B&H Photo Video, and Newegg.
• Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Twin Edge OC Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse at Amazon, and Newegg.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4070 carries an MSRP of $599, but AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT is priced at $499. Despite being priced lower, AMD's offering sometimes outperforms its more expensive rival in many games that depend on rasterization, with performance that's close to the competitor in some ray tracing-supporting games as well. This certainly increases the value of AMD's product, earning it a spot on our list of the best graphics cards.

We suspect that's why at least three GPU manufacturers are partnering with select retailers to offer certain GeForce RTX 4070 models with a $50 discount. However, it's unknown whether this is a short-term campaign or if other manufacturers and retailers will join it and keep the base price at $549 for the long-term.

Regardless, it doesn't look like Nvidia is quietly reducing the recommended price of its GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards. The official MSRP remains at $599, just as the RTX 4060 Ti sits at $399 with the 4060 Ti 16GB model at $499. Now that AMD's Navi 32 GPUs have arrived, you can now find all three of those RTX cards for less than their respective MSRPs.

MSI announced its Gaming Slim RTX 40 graphics cards at the end of last month. We have noticed that it has fleshed out the series to include Nvidia’s top-end Ada Lovelace graphics cards, specifically the GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 models, two of the best graphics cards. If anything, these typically bulkier, powerful cards should benefit more from the slimming exercise.

The MSI Gaming Slim series began with lower-end GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 4070, and RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards. MSI has decided product proliferation is its friend and produced the above four models with variants in black and white and in both Gaming and Gaming X (overclocked) variants – for 12 new models in total.

Today, if you head on over to the official MSI product pages, you will find that there are a further five new entrants at the high-end of the Gaming Slim series as follows:

• MSI GeForce RTX 4090 24G Gaming Slim
• MSI GeForce RTX 4090 24G Gaming X Slim
• MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16G Gaming Slim
• MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16G Gaming Slim White
• MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16G Gaming X Slim

Like us, you might wonder how slim these new graphics cards are compared to previously available examples. This query was answered nicely by MSI’s official product comparison engine (see image below).

The MSI Gaming Slim RTX 4080 and 4090 are a little slimmer than the previous corresponding Gaming Trio models. In the case of the RTX 4080, the Slim model is just 5mm thinner (but also a bit smaller in the other two dimensions) and 203g lighter. As for the RTX 4090 Gaming Slim, it seems to be a more worthwhile 15mm slimmer. In terms of weight, the RTX 4090 Gaming Slim also gets a much more significant reduction, being 393g lighter. However, the size isn’t an issue if the GPU is adequately supported in the case - and these models come with a support bracket as a standard issue. A weighty cooler sometimes indicates quality, with a large/heavy heatsink used so the active cooling (fans) doesn’t have to be so active.

MSI also slightly revamped the display outputs. For example, the regular GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio 24G has three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and only one HDMI 2.1a port. On the contrary, the GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming X Slim 24G features two of each.

Other specifications appear unchanged besides the slimmed-down coolers and, thus, these cards’ overall size and weight reductions. It would probably be wise to wait until several third-party reviews of these Gaming Slim cards, with their trimmed-down cooling solutions, before rushing out to buy one. The cooler is the chief differentiator among graphics card models, and scaling it back in size and weight might lead to undesirable comparisons vs. rival series, like the earlier Gaming Trio models.

After it turned out that Nvidia-supplied 16-pin 12VHPWR adapters could melt if inappropriately connected to the graphics card, many GeForce RTX 40-series users opted to use aftermarket 12VHPWR adapters, which are also prone to failure if improperly fitted. Now, it appears that MSI is refusing to replace a graphics card that failed because of the CableMod dongle.

A Reddit user has published his purported communications with MSI, and the company's employee claims that their graphics card failed because of a 12VHPWR CableMod adapter with 'manufacturing and tolerance issues,' which voids the MSI warranty.

"There is an ongoing issue with CableMod's adapter seemingly due to manufacturing and tolerance issues with the CableMod adapter," an alleged statement by MSI reads. "You will need to contact CableMod as their third-party adapter has caused an issue and voided the warranty on your graphics card."

CableMod has neither confirmed nor denied the possibility that a graphics card can fail because of its 12VHPWR adapter, but has promised to look into the issue.

"Sorry to hear that, please put in a ticket with our support team," Matt from CableMod said. "They will make sure you get covered for sure in full."

After examining approximately 50 cases of 16-pin 12VHPWR cable adapters overheating and melting, Nvidia identified a recurrent problem: the connectors were not securely attached to the graphics card. The firm advises connecting the dongles before mounting the graphics card to the motherboard. However, repeated issues with cards deployed in the market imply that the cables could potentially work their way loose over time. 

Ensuring power connectors are securely fitted is crucial, as almost all cables are susceptible to overheating when loosely connected. Additionally, it is imperative to securely attach the connector to Nvidia's range-topping GeForce RTX GPUs. The top-tier 40-series GPUs can pull as much as 450W from the PSU, demanding top-notch cables and stable connections to manage such a significant power transfer.

At an event in China earlier this week Lenovo took the wraps off its latest Legion series gaming laptop. The new Lenovo Legion 9i's claim to fame is that it includes the "thinnest water cooling in the industry." It will also be on many portable PC gaming enthusiast wish lists due to other premium components such as the Core i9-13980HX CPU and GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. 

Tech site MSPowerUser shared rendered images of the laptop in its coverage of this announcement, but VideoCardz helped make the announcement more interesting by confirming the presence of a water cooling system in this upcoming flagship, as well as unearthing a tech specs list.

According to some of the supporting presentation slides at the Lenovo Legion 9i unveiling event, the cooling system is one of the slimmest water cooling implementations yet. In some official renders we see the liquid cooling loop, various heatsinks and the position of a trio of cooling fans. It is explained that the liquid cooling isn't necessary until the GPU temperature hits 84+ degrees Celsius. After this threshold "the liquid pump starts to work quickly to reduce the GPU temperature," says a translated slide. An AI-based system is claimed to optimize the cooling / performance of this laptop.

So, the text confirms the liquid cooling and twin fans on the GPU side of the motherboard are all to keep the GPU cool, while the fan on the right will be there for the CPU. Some other information from the source asserts that Lenovo has used '3D blades' in its cooling fans and used liquid metal for its hard to beat thermal interface properties. All of this is housed in a slim 18.9mm profile, with a distinctive finish to the laptop provided by a carbon fiber material.

This new flagship gaming laptop is claimed to be destined for a fuller reveal at IFA 2023 (Sept 1 to Sept 5, in Berlin). We don't have details about pricing or release dates as yet. We hope it will be released in time to be a contender for our regularly updated Best gaming laptops of 2023 feature.

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.

It seems that gamers still hoping to get into the RTX 40-series bandwagon will have to be content with the RTX 4090 GPU as the halo product of this generation. That's according to the typically thrustworthy leaker Kopite7kimi, who reported via Twitter that internal Nvidia plans to launch a refreshed flagship — let's call it the RTX 4090 Ti — have been canceled.

The rumor comes as the one-year anniversary of the RTX 4090's announcement (originally in September 2022) is fast approaching. Through recent years, Nvidia has been building out its product stack with mid-generation refreshes that not only add the "Ti" moniker, but also offer performance step-ups to better round-out the company's lineup against AMD's comparable competition. Nvidia has already launched some Ti models (namely the RTX 4060 Ti and the RTX 4070 Ti), but that strategy doesn't seem to be happening on the upper ladders of Nvidia's product stack anymore.

There may be a few reasons for this. The main reason likely has to do with competition (or the lack thereof). Once again, AMD decided not to go after the performance crown; the RX 7900 XTX, while a great card that's frequently at the top of our list of the best graphics cards, is more of a direct competitor to the RTX 4080. Nvidia still has the halo product and the brownie points that brings, so why spend more money in bringing yet another SKU to market?

Of course, there's an argument that NVIDIA must be sitting on at least some number of fully-functioning AD-102 chips, but those bring less of a profit than a comparable professional accelerator (such as the Nvidia L40 or others). There's also the question of power consumption, and with the 16-pin meltdown controversy still not fully put to bed, the potential for issues with a 600W RTX 4090 Ti certainly exist.

There's also the fact that sales of graphics cards and PC components are slumping badly right now. With the previous generation RTX 30-series cards, Nvidia introduced the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti less than a year after the initial launch, with an RTX 3090 Ti arriving in April 2022. The first two were commercially successful, due to the unprecedented demand. The last? Not so much. If Nvidia doesn't do a mid-cycle refresh for the RTX 40-series, that speaks volumes about how many cards are sitting on shelves.

Kopite7kimi added that while plans for Ti versions of Nvidia's top-performing cards are out of the deck, there's still a plan to optimize production silicon by introducing further products onto the stack. According to the leaker, though, these are being geared more toward the Chinese market and should fit in Nvidia's lineup as variations of the RTX 4060 and 4070 based on the AD103 and AD106 chips. If this pans out, it seems both AMD and Nvidia are willing to make specific GPUs to cater to the (admittedly immense) Chinese market.

As an added bonus, Kopite7kimi also mentioned that multiple industry sources have confirmed that the next-generation Nvidia flagship (let's call it the RTX 5090) will feature a 512-bit memory interface. If true, this marks the first time since the GTX 280 and GTX 285 days — all the way back in 2008/2009! — that Nvidia has used a 512-bit bus width.

Of course, that doesn't include dual-GPU cards, like the Titan Z with a 2 x 384-bit bus.  Or there was also the GTX 295 with a dual 448-bit interface. The last mainstream consumer GPU with a 512-bit bus (not counting HBM/HBM2 solutions) were AMD's R9 390/390X (which were basically tuned variants of the earlier R9 290/290X). Regardless, most graphics cards on the market instead use a simpler, and less expensive, 256-bit bus. Top models may go as wide as a 384-bit interface, which is still enough to offer bandwidth of around 1 TB/s mark when paired with the appropriate VRAM tech (GDDR6X or GDDR6).

Companies usually prefer to add memory bandwidth by adopting newer (and faster) memory tech rather than by increasing the bus depth, due to the lower developmental and manufacturing costs incurred. And with Nvidia being expected to introduce its RTX 5000 series by 2025, it's theoretically possible that the company might be looking to pair its next product family with GDDR7 memory.

At a maximum throughput of 32 Gbps, a 512-bit bus width would translate into 2 TB/s throughput — double that of the RTX 4090. Considering how even $1,500 cards are nowadays insufficient to run the latest games at full settings and native resolution (looking at you, Remnant II), there may be something to that idea. With 2GB memory chips, a 512-bit interface would also translate to 32GB of VRAM total on such a GPU, or potentially even 64GB and 128GB professional versions with 4GB chips.

Again, everything we're saying here stems from Kopite7kimi's tweets. While they're generally correct, this isn't the same as an official confirmation. Product roadmaps can and will change. Maybe Nvidia will ultimately decide to launch a new Titan RTX based on AD102, maybe it won't. So do your best "salt bae" impersonation with regards to the RTX 4090 Ti and future RTX 5090 rumors.

MSI has seemingly started to sell its own GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card with a two-wide blower-type cooling system. Since Nvidia does not produce its own high-end graphics cards with blowers since they may compete against its expensive workstation and server-oriented add-in-boards (AIBs), large makers of graphics cards tend to not offer them. According to a tweet by @harukaze5719, MSI has apparently produced one and it is being offered for sale

MSI's GeForce RTX 4090 Aero S 24G (which is not even listed at MSI.com) is now apparently available from 3DStor.com, an online store specializing on datacenter and workstation hardware. From a specifications point of view, the board follows Nvidia's recommendations when it comes to boost clocks (2520 MHz), so this graphics card is certainly not a factory-overclocked product. In fact, keeping in mind that the device is aimed not only at gamers with compact rigs, but mostly at professionals seeking to install two or more of such cards in one system, it is better to run at stock to avoid overheating. 

The board uses a 16-pin 12VHPWR connector, but for some reason 3DStor.com lists its TGP at 350W, which is 100W lower when compared to regular RTX 4090 AIBs. We must assume that this is a typo and that its TGP is the same as other RTX 4090 graphics cards, which are currently the best graphics cards for gaming. Meanwhile, when the board peaks at 450W, its blower-based cooling system likely gets extremely loud. 

Speaking of blower-style coolers in general, we must note that while not the most silent or efficient, these cooling systems are ideal for cooling high-heat graphics cards in compact PCs, especially when multiple cards are installed. They work well even with limited internal airflow and the only viable alternative in such cases is obviously liquid cooling. 

While 3DStor lists MSI's GeForce RTX 4090 Aero S 24G, it never reveals its price. In fact, it is likely that interested parties need to contact the company and tell the number of boards they want before getting exact quote. Meanwhile, the device can be purchased at Ebay for a whopping price of $3,065, which is comparable to the price of mid-range professional offerings.

According to a recent Reddit post, Nvidia is subtly upgrading its Best GPU the RTX 4090 Founders Edition, with the same modified 16-pin power connector recently found on the RTX 4070. The Redditor, known as u/prackprackprack, uploaded pictures to Reddit showing off the shortened sense pins on his RTX 4090. The changes were confirmed by other Redditors, comparing his images to images of older RTX 4090 FE cards.

The modifications made on the new RTX 4090 FE power connector include changes to the four sense pins that feed data to and from the GPU to the PSU. The pins have been retracted slightly inside the connector. This adjustment was apparently taken from the latest 12V-2x6 power connector specifications to ensure the power connector won't continuously feed power to the GPU if the 16-pin power cable is not inserted all the way. This should keep the graphics card safe from death due to fire or overheating, as we've seen with various RTX 4090 cards since launch.

Brand New 4090 FE Shortened Sense Pins? In response to Igor’s Lab Article “Secret change to the sense pins starting from the GeForce RTX 4070 FE and no one noticed it” from r/nvidia

It's good to see that Nvidia is finally introducing this modified connector to the RTX 4090, which is the most prone to disaster due to its incredibly high power consumption of up to 450W — more on some overclocked models. The modifications made to the RTX 4090 were originally seen in the RTX 4070, which has had them since launch even though Nvidia didn't call out this fact.

For reference, the power connector we're seeing here (for both the 4090 and 4070) appears to be a prototype 12V-2x6 connector that has been built according to PCI-SIG's recommended specifications. The 12V-2x6 connector is still in active development, meaning a finalized version of the connector is not yet available for Nvidia to use. Nonetheless, it seems like the RTX 4090 melting reports were enough for Nvidia to rush a prototype version out to its newer cards, hopefully stopping more GPUs from dying.

The frustrating part of this situation is that we don't know which production versions of the RTX 4090 are receiving this new connector. We also don't know if the prototype connector is making its way to AIB partner models or not. But, if Nvidia follows the same trend as the RTX 4070, the RTX 4090 should be getting this new connector for both Founders Edition and AIB partner models.

We'd also expect all manufacturers of other graphics cards that use a 16-pin connector — including the RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4060 Ti, and perhaps even some RTX 4060 models — to eventually shift to the new style connector as well. How long it might take before the older variants clear the market remains to be seen.

Extreme overclocker CENS has pushed an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card to 4,090 MHz for "a fun one." If we look at the German overclocker's screenshots, we can see they actually achieved 4,095 MHz, but we appreciate their eye for symmetry, and a headline.

CENS' liquid nitrogen fuelled overclocking feat certainly proves that timing is everything, as last week we covered the momentous occasion of the first Nvidia AD102 GPU to edge past the 4,000 MHz milestone. CENS and Splave had been earnestly jockeying for that crown through June and early July, but Splave managed to grab the glory last week.

While the official HWBot charts have a max CPU speed, max memory speed, and even a max motherboard speed category, there is no such general GPU frequency chart. Recently RTX 4090 GPU overclockers have run a benchmark, commonly GPUPi v3,3 32B, to register their GPU frequencies on the HWBot database. However, for some reason, possibly due to stability, CENS didn't even run GPUPi - so Splave retains that particular world record.

For the GeForce RTX 4090 pushed to 4090 MHz, all CENS shows is a GPU-Z screenshot, and a picture of his LN2 cooled system. In the GPU-Z info screens we can see that the 4,095 MHz was achieved while the GPU was cooled to about minus 35 degrees Celsius. We don't know exactly what the hardware used was this time around, but it is likely to be the same setup CENS used for previous 4 GHz GPU clock milestone attempts. Central to that setup was the Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 iGame LAB graphics card. CENS' wallpaper still has this graphics card logo on it. In his extreme RTX 4090 overclocking adventures, Splave seemed to prefer the Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090.

It is likely that CENS' other system components remained the same, namely an Intel Core i9 13900K, an EVGA DARK Kingpin Z690 motherboard, and specialist extreme cooling paraphernalia from KingPin and Elmor Labs.

More Just-for-Fun World Records, Please

The world's fastest verified CPU frequency according to HWBot is 9,009 MHz on an Intel Core i9 13900K (8P). Sadly, a just-for-fun world record where this CPU is pushed to 13,900 MHz seems to be way out of reach. The venerable AMD FX-8370 has been pushed well beyond its 'fun' stage, achieving 8,723 MHz to be second placed in the CPU frequency rankings.