GPU cooling differences: Dell RTX 4090

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continuum

continuum

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  • #1
    gamersnexus.net

    Dell Made an Impressive RTX 4090: Relatively Small, Large Flow-Through, & Good Cooling | GamersNexus

    GPUs Dell Made an Impressive RTX 4090: Relatively Small, Large Flow-Through, & Good Cooling October 15, 2023 Last Updated: 2023-11-03 Alienware’s RTX 4090 remains a competent successor to the company’s RTX 3090 GPU The Highlights Dell’s RTX 4090 is based on a reference 4090 PCBThe card's power...
    gamersnexus.net gamersnexus.net

    Obviously most 3rd party RTX 4090's with bigger coolers will perform better thermally and acoustically-- but what caught my here was the fact that they tested not only thermals/compared to an Asus with a good cooler, but that they also tested with the exhaust vent blocked up.

    As GN states clearly it's not a practical test, but still good to see the difference, since we have relatively little public data on this kind of thing.

    Purely as a curiosity, we decided to cover up the flow-through area of the card. This is something we’ve been wondering about, so it’s just an academic exercise -- there’s no practical value. We used 2 layers of heavy-duty gorilla tape to cover the hole in the backplate. We also controlled the fan speed and the power target, so all variables were fixed except for the presence of the flow-through hole.

    Taping it over increased temperature by about 5 degrees Celsius across the board, plus or minus a little bit. The large flow-through area that Dell included does actually do something, and does clearly help the GPU thermals.
    Click to expand...
     
    whoisit

    whoisit

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  • #3
    Some of their GPUs have good cooling, some of them don't have any contact bewteen the cooler and VRMs, or the cooler and memory modules. Depends on the card. Generally though, they have been much better about cooling the latest couple of series of nVidia cards.

    The could make Alienware systems run cooler if they would stop using the same chassis from the early 2000s and covering every vent with plastic.
     
    malor

    malor

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  • #4
    My 3070 came from Dell, because it was the only way I could find one during the pandemic. It's been really good. It uses just one 8-pin power connector, and hasn't given me any trouble at all.

    The Alienware it came in was pretty crap, though. I'm using it as a minor server, but don't like it much. The CPU cooling is bad and expansion is super limited. I'd call the motherboard mostly crippled.
     
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