Neat trick: Bear in mind when the most effective graphics playing cards solely took up a single slot in your PC case? These days are lengthy gone, with even lower-end playing cards taking over appreciable house behind your PC. However what for those who might lower an RTX 4090’s volumetric footprint by greater than half? That is what Optimum Tech did with an aftermarket GPU water block.
Right this moment’s high-end graphics playing cards usually are not the slim parts they as soon as have been. With their fats heatsinks and followers, GPUs like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 flip the flat right into a townhouse apartment. Nevertheless, the YouTube channel Optimum Tech (OT) used a water-cooling mod to show the Nvidia behemoth right into a slim folio-sized card.
Optimum Tech mentioned that is most likely not a super answer for many PC builds, however water cooling is a bit area of interest anyway. Nevertheless, it mentioned that the smaller footprint might turn out to be useful in enterprise server purposes. That mentioned, OT plans to put in the cardboard into its fundamental rig to see the way it performs in comparison with its present setup. For now, it simply ran it from an open bench.
The mod used is Alphacool’s ES water block. It’s only suitable with a number of RTX 4090 fashions. Optimum Tech used an iChill Inno3D card on this case. The conversion to a water-cooled GPU resulted in a card that would simply slot in an ITX case — simply 210mm lengthy and slim sufficient for one case slot.
Whereas testing it on an open bench, Optimum Tech discovered that efficiency was on par with different alternate options like MSI’s Supreme Liquid X. It ran God of Conflict and Management at body charges above 100fps with GPU temperatures solely rising to about 53 levels Celsius. Nevertheless, efficiency inside a case can considerably range. Optimum Tech recommends operating it in a dual-radiator setup.
Once more, Alphacool designed this water block to cut back graphic card measurement and match extra right into a rack. Nevertheless, nothing is stopping adventurous builders from incorporating the mod into present or upcoming rigs, as OT intends to do quickly. The block sells for $166.36US from Australian retailer Aquatuning.
