The Nvidia RTX 4090 takes the crown for the quickest graphics card presently accessible, however it’s not with out issues. In fact there’s the intense worth, theoretically beginning at $1,599 however sometimes promoting for over $2,000 proper now. There’s additionally the matter of measurement. The smallest of the normal RTX 4090 playing cards takes up not less than three slots, usually overlapping right into a fourth slot. If you wish to construct a customized liquid cooling loop with a compact RTX 4090, although, Alphacool has an answer.
Optimum Tech posted a video evaluation of maybe the smallest 4090 water block presently accessible, the Alphacool ES Geforce RTX 4090 Reference Design with Backplate (opens in new tab). There is a compatibility record for numerous GPUs (opens in new tab), however the cooler in query — mannequin quantity 13395 — presently solely exhibits compatibility with a couple of fashions. A type of fashions is the Inno3D used within the video, one other is the KFA2 RTX 4090 SG, which ought to be the identical because the Galax RTX 4090 SG (opens in new tab). Sadly, neither a type of is available within the US.
There are many different RTX 4090 water blocks on the market, together with some single-slot choices from EKWB, however none are as compact as this Alphacool mannequin. In fact, you continue to want so as to add in the remainder of the liquid cooling loop, and with a 450W TBP, going with twin radiators will surely be warranted.
This specific cooler is not actually designed for house customers, although, even when it could work there. It is a part of the Enterprise lineup of coolers from Alphacool, with the thought being you could possibly probably stuff as much as 4 RTX 4090 playing cards right into a single server or workstation. At that time, you’d most likely wish to tune the playing cards to run at a considerably decrease energy restrict like 300W, which might make this into one thing of a “poor man’s” model of the RTX 6000 Ada — with half the VRAM.
That is an attention-grabbing worth proposition, although, changing a single $6,800 (or extra) skilled card with a number of client grade playing cards. There’s undoubtedly extra overlap occurring between Nvidia’s skilled line and the GeForce line, and the present costs on RTX 4090 playing cards nonetheless are likely to hover within the $2,000 and better vary. That is a ton of money to plunk down on a gaming GPU, however should you’re doing AI coaching and inference — together with Steady Diffusion — 3D rendering, or different skilled work, it’d symbolize some form of ‘cut price.’
Hopefully, somebody will take the time to construct a quad-4090 setup utilizing one thing like this Alphacool waterblock, after which submit a video and photos. As a result of for lots of us, that is about as shut as we’re more likely to come to purchasing such a card.