The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition: A Review of its Unique Thermal Design and Performance Capabilities

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is a unique graphics card that utilizes an innovative thermal design, known as Flow Through Cooling. This design features large fans that provide ample airflow to the GPU, keeping it cool even during intense gaming sessions.

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition uses 110mm fans, which are significantly larger than those found on most other graphics cards, including the popular Gaming X Trio from MSI. In fact, the only card that rivals its size is the ASUS TUF, with a slightly longer and taller design.

Despite its size, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition has a compact two-slot design, making it an attractive option for those who want a powerful GPU without taking up too much space in their case. However, its dimensions make it unsuitable for most ITX cases, which often have limited PCI expansion slots.

One of the standout features of this card is its thermal performance. During testing, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition ran at just 68 degrees Celsius, making it one of the coolest graphics cards available on the market. Its power consumption was also relatively low, with a peak reading of around 350 watts.

However, when compared to other aftermarket cards, such as the MSI Gaming X Trio, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition is not significantly cooler or quieter. The Gaming X Trio, which has a higher power target and factory overclock, runs slightly warmer but dials back its performance to maintain a similar level of gaming performance.

The real question is how will board partners compete with this innovative thermal design? While the RTX 3080 Founders Edition was able to outperform larger triple fan aftermarket cards from board partners, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition's unique cooling system makes it an even more formidable opponent. With its compact two-slot design and impressive thermal performance, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition is a serious contender in the world of graphics cards.

In terms of noise performance, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition is relatively quiet, with a reading of around 1200 rpm during full load testing. This makes it an attractive option for those who value both performance and silence. However, it's worth noting that thermal and noise performance cannot be directly compared between the Founders Edition and aftermarket cards, as they have different power targets and factory overclocks.

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is a truly impressive graphics card that offers both exceptional thermal performance and quiet operation. Its unique cooling system makes it an attractive option for those who want a powerful GPU without sacrificing too much space in their case. However, the question remains as to how board partners will compete with this innovative design in the future.

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition also raises questions about the direction of graphics card cooling technology. With its use of large fans and Flow Through Cooling, it's clear that NVIDIA is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in terms of thermal performance. As a consumer, it's exciting to see this innovative design come to life, but as a reviewer, it's also important to consider how board partners will respond to this new standard.

In conclusion, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition is a remarkable graphics card that offers exceptional thermal performance and quiet operation. Its unique cooling system makes it an attractive option for those who want a powerful GPU without sacrificing too much space in their case. However, the question remains as to how board partners will compete with this innovative design in the future, and whether we'll see more cards like this on the market in the near future.

Size Comparison

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is significantly larger than most other graphics cards on the market, including the popular Gaming X Trio from MSI. The Founders Edition measures 285mm in length, while the Gaming X Trio measures 295mm. It's also 26mm taller and has a thicker expansion slot, making it an imposing presence in any case.

Despite its size, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition has a compact two-slot design, making it an attractive option for those who want a powerful GPU without taking up too much space in their case. However, its dimensions make it unsuitable for most ITX cases, which often have limited PCI expansion slots.

Thermal Performance

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is incredibly cool, with a maximum temperature reading of just 68 degrees Celsius during testing. Its power consumption was also relatively low, with a peak reading of around 350 watts.

During full load testing, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition ran quietly, with a reading of around 1200 rpm. This makes it an attractive option for those who value both performance and silence. However, it's worth noting that thermal and noise performance cannot be directly compared between the Founders Edition and aftermarket cards, as they have different power targets and factory overclocks.

Power Consumption

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition has a relatively high power consumption, with a peak reading of around 350 watts during testing. This is slightly higher than the Gaming X Trio, which also has a high power target but dials back its performance to maintain a similar level of gaming performance.

Noise Performance

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is relatively quiet, with a reading of around 1200 rpm during full load testing. This makes it an attractive option for those who value both performance and silence. However, it's worth noting that thermal and noise performance cannot be directly compared between the Founders Edition and aftermarket cards, as they have different power targets and factory overclocks.

Conclusion

The RTX 3090 Founders Edition is a remarkable graphics card that offers exceptional thermal performance and quiet operation. Its unique cooling system makes it an attractive option for those who want a powerful GPU without sacrificing too much space in their case. However, the question remains as to how board partners will compete with this innovative design in the future, and whether we'll see more cards like this on the market in the near future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennvidia's rtx 3090 founders edition is by far the biggest cooler design that they've developed for their own fe cards so what exactly does that get you in terms of cooling performance and what about the new flow through cooler design i have a ton of questions that i want to answer in this video today mostly about this massive three slot core that nvidia have developed for the new rtx 3090 and one of those main questions is is this the first time that we might see a founder's edition card and cooler actually outperform the aftermarket cards from board partners let's take a look firstly a quick recap on rtx 3090 performance really there are two types of people interested in the 3090. the first one is solely for that huge video memory capacity of 24 gigabytes which despite being a 1500 card that's a thousand dollars less than the titan rtx which shipped with the same capacity of memory but also slower and the second one is solely for those who just buy the best performance that they can for each generation and have loads of cash to throw at their hobbies otherwise the rtx 3080 is a much better recommendation as a high-end gpu it's less than half the cost and literally gets you 90 of the way there for what most of you are going to be doing with it but this is still the fastest single gpu that you can buy and the main kind of selling point of this gpu is definitely the video memory overhead on here 24 gigabytes of gddr6 x memory with a bandwidth close to one terabyte per second is definitely the reason that you should be buying this gpu forget about 8k gaming and forget about the 10 to 15 percent that you might get in 4k and 1440p gaming although you can consider that kind of a bonus so 24 gigabytes of vram is definitely appealing here but what's also really appealing is this absolutely huge three slot premium cooler design and i want to start off just by mentioning the build quality which is really hard to convey over video but since every aftermarket graphics card design out there is plastic a full metal build can definitely be appreciated one of my favorite parts about the new founders edition design is definitely that huge exhaust vent near the rear i o we've seen this on the 3080 it's pretty big there too for what is a two slot card but it's absolutely massive on the 30 90. and i hope we see more cooler designs like this in the future where a good portion of the graphics card heat is immediately thrown out of the case as we've seen in previous testing this can really help cpu thermals quite a bit but it's important to know that not all of the airflow from this bottom fan will be exhausted from this vent and out of the case it seems that around half of it does make its way through the cut out in the metal frame to pass through the two heatsinks in the middle initially i thought these heatsinks were cooled passively and didn't really receive any airflow from either of the fans but they definitely receive at least a bit from the bottom fan you'll also find a sneaky nv link connector in its usual spot if you plan to link one or more of these cards together and this is the only gpu in the ampere lineup with this so far now i am a fan of the new 12 pin power connector more power in a smaller footprint is always something that i'm down for but nvidia really should have shipped this with a much better adapter i mean what is this the stock one feels extremely diy and it has loose heat shrink and kind of bulgy cables it's pretty bulky as well and does add around 10 millimeters of height to the card one thing that i definitely do appreciate though no more green leds for the geforce logo just a nice clean white which will suit any build there's also some subtle illumination on the underside of the card in the middle but you're probably not going to see that in your build and that's pretty much it i've done a full video on the new flow through cooler design and explained how that works so i won't spend any more time on that in this video but one thing i will say is that nvidia are using some really big fans here some of the biggest that i've seen on any graphics card they're both 110 millimeters in diameter and as a point of comparison the 3080 founders edition uses 85 millimeter fans and even the gaming x trio uses 90 mil fans so 110 mil fans are kind of unseen on graphics cards and that's one of the reasons that this appears to be so big here's a size comparison versus the 30 80 founders edition 313 millimeters in length versus 285 it's also 26 millimeters taller and a whole expansion slot thicker so the 3090 is big but there will be a few aftermarket cards that are technically bigger in dimensions and the gaming x trio is one example 10 millimeters longer and two millimeters taller but nowhere near as thick or heavy the 3090 fe uses a unique pcb design that is essentially an expansion of the 3080 fe i haven't seen any water block designs for this card just yet but there are plenty of other rtx 3090 cards out there if water calling is what you plan to do now as you could probably guess this card isn't going to fit in many itx cases any case that doesn't support at least three pci expansion slots is immediately out of the question and even some that do like the encase m1 the card is still too big probably the most sensible compact case out there for this card if you really need a compact gpu workstation is the sliger cl530 it's an 11 litre console style case with large three slot card support and this case should pair well with the flow through design of this card as it does have ventilation on both sides and at least by looking at the dimensions this should fit in the formed t1 which would likely get you the most compact rtx 3090 case and gpu configuration it looks like it will fit but i'm yet to actually test anything so definitely don't take my word on it just yet even if you can fit it in there the thermal design of the flow through cooler is probably less than ideal in a sandwich layout case but again that's something that i've yet to test more on that in the next video so for thermal performance the rtx 3090 founders edition runs fairly cool at just 68 degrees c but also very quiet at a little over 1200 rpm remember the board power here is upwards of 350 watts for some context here's msi's gaming x trio which runs both warmer and louder than the founders edition but still at a very respectable and safe level i have a feeling that most aftermarket cards will perform in this ballpark and i'm looking forward to seeing if any models like the asus tuff or strix can actually outperform the founders edition on thermal and noise performance speaking of noise here's what both cards sound like at full load on an open test bench with the microphone at a 25 centimeter distance i will say it's not exactly fair to compare thermals and noise directly between a founder's edition and aftermarket 30 series cards seeing as aftermarket cards do have a higher power target and factory overclock as you can see here the power consumption is around 20 watts higher although when we compare clock speed the difference isn't as large as you'd think out of the box likely because the msi card runs a bit warmer and then dials things back a bit overall you're looking at around a 30 megahertz difference after a sustained period and that's nowhere near enough to make a meaningful difference on gaming performance so really the rtx 3090 founders edition is really impressive it's really refreshing to see from a testing standpoint because it's something new and different and it's also really appealing from a consumer standpoint because it objectively performs pretty good but maybe it performs too good and i think we should address the elephant in the room here how are board partners meant to compete with this at all now i'm not implying that nvidia should just roll back to their simple blower card design and not strive to make their own graphics cards better after all thermal and noise performance is a large component of the overall consumer experience of a gpu and evidently this is the result and it's a really good one a really interesting and effective direction in graphics card cooling as a consumer i definitely know what caller design i'd be picking for my own system but i can't help but feel the pressure for board partners i just really doubt they have the r d budget to engineer and compete with something like this now that doesn't seem to be the case with the rtx 3080 founders edition which does seem to be outperformed by larger triple fan aftermarket car designs from board partners but this card does have some other things going for it like a very compact two slot design and this will lead us into our next video where we'll be taking a look at how well suited this thermal design is for many mini itx cases until then a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next onenvidia's rtx 3090 founders edition is by far the biggest cooler design that they've developed for their own fe cards so what exactly does that get you in terms of cooling performance and what about the new flow through cooler design i have a ton of questions that i want to answer in this video today mostly about this massive three slot core that nvidia have developed for the new rtx 3090 and one of those main questions is is this the first time that we might see a founder's edition card and cooler actually outperform the aftermarket cards from board partners let's take a look firstly a quick recap on rtx 3090 performance really there are two types of people interested in the 3090. the first one is solely for that huge video memory capacity of 24 gigabytes which despite being a 1500 card that's a thousand dollars less than the titan rtx which shipped with the same capacity of memory but also slower and the second one is solely for those who just buy the best performance that they can for each generation and have loads of cash to throw at their hobbies otherwise the rtx 3080 is a much better recommendation as a high-end gpu it's less than half the cost and literally gets you 90 of the way there for what most of you are going to be doing with it but this is still the fastest single gpu that you can buy and the main kind of selling point of this gpu is definitely the video memory overhead on here 24 gigabytes of gddr6 x memory with a bandwidth close to one terabyte per second is definitely the reason that you should be buying this gpu forget about 8k gaming and forget about the 10 to 15 percent that you might get in 4k and 1440p gaming although you can consider that kind of a bonus so 24 gigabytes of vram is definitely appealing here but what's also really appealing is this absolutely huge three slot premium cooler design and i want to start off just by mentioning the build quality which is really hard to convey over video but since every aftermarket graphics card design out there is plastic a full metal build can definitely be appreciated one of my favorite parts about the new founders edition design is definitely that huge exhaust vent near the rear i o we've seen this on the 3080 it's pretty big there too for what is a two slot card but it's absolutely massive on the 30 90. and i hope we see more cooler designs like this in the future where a good portion of the graphics card heat is immediately thrown out of the case as we've seen in previous testing this can really help cpu thermals quite a bit but it's important to know that not all of the airflow from this bottom fan will be exhausted from this vent and out of the case it seems that around half of it does make its way through the cut out in the metal frame to pass through the two heatsinks in the middle initially i thought these heatsinks were cooled passively and didn't really receive any airflow from either of the fans but they definitely receive at least a bit from the bottom fan you'll also find a sneaky nv link connector in its usual spot if you plan to link one or more of these cards together and this is the only gpu in the ampere lineup with this so far now i am a fan of the new 12 pin power connector more power in a smaller footprint is always something that i'm down for but nvidia really should have shipped this with a much better adapter i mean what is this the stock one feels extremely diy and it has loose heat shrink and kind of bulgy cables it's pretty bulky as well and does add around 10 millimeters of height to the card one thing that i definitely do appreciate though no more green leds for the geforce logo just a nice clean white which will suit any build there's also some subtle illumination on the underside of the card in the middle but you're probably not going to see that in your build and that's pretty much it i've done a full video on the new flow through cooler design and explained how that works so i won't spend any more time on that in this video but one thing i will say is that nvidia are using some really big fans here some of the biggest that i've seen on any graphics card they're both 110 millimeters in diameter and as a point of comparison the 3080 founders edition uses 85 millimeter fans and even the gaming x trio uses 90 mil fans so 110 mil fans are kind of unseen on graphics cards and that's one of the reasons that this appears to be so big here's a size comparison versus the 30 80 founders edition 313 millimeters in length versus 285 it's also 26 millimeters taller and a whole expansion slot thicker so the 3090 is big but there will be a few aftermarket cards that are technically bigger in dimensions and the gaming x trio is one example 10 millimeters longer and two millimeters taller but nowhere near as thick or heavy the 3090 fe uses a unique pcb design that is essentially an expansion of the 3080 fe i haven't seen any water block designs for this card just yet but there are plenty of other rtx 3090 cards out there if water calling is what you plan to do now as you could probably guess this card isn't going to fit in many itx cases any case that doesn't support at least three pci expansion slots is immediately out of the question and even some that do like the encase m1 the card is still too big probably the most sensible compact case out there for this card if you really need a compact gpu workstation is the sliger cl530 it's an 11 litre console style case with large three slot card support and this case should pair well with the flow through design of this card as it does have ventilation on both sides and at least by looking at the dimensions this should fit in the formed t1 which would likely get you the most compact rtx 3090 case and gpu configuration it looks like it will fit but i'm yet to actually test anything so definitely don't take my word on it just yet even if you can fit it in there the thermal design of the flow through cooler is probably less than ideal in a sandwich layout case but again that's something that i've yet to test more on that in the next video so for thermal performance the rtx 3090 founders edition runs fairly cool at just 68 degrees c but also very quiet at a little over 1200 rpm remember the board power here is upwards of 350 watts for some context here's msi's gaming x trio which runs both warmer and louder than the founders edition but still at a very respectable and safe level i have a feeling that most aftermarket cards will perform in this ballpark and i'm looking forward to seeing if any models like the asus tuff or strix can actually outperform the founders edition on thermal and noise performance speaking of noise here's what both cards sound like at full load on an open test bench with the microphone at a 25 centimeter distance i will say it's not exactly fair to compare thermals and noise directly between a founder's edition and aftermarket 30 series cards seeing as aftermarket cards do have a higher power target and factory overclock as you can see here the power consumption is around 20 watts higher although when we compare clock speed the difference isn't as large as you'd think out of the box likely because the msi card runs a bit warmer and then dials things back a bit overall you're looking at around a 30 megahertz difference after a sustained period and that's nowhere near enough to make a meaningful difference on gaming performance so really the rtx 3090 founders edition is really impressive it's really refreshing to see from a testing standpoint because it's something new and different and it's also really appealing from a consumer standpoint because it objectively performs pretty good but maybe it performs too good and i think we should address the elephant in the room here how are board partners meant to compete with this at all now i'm not implying that nvidia should just roll back to their simple blower card design and not strive to make their own graphics cards better after all thermal and noise performance is a large component of the overall consumer experience of a gpu and evidently this is the result and it's a really good one a really interesting and effective direction in graphics card cooling as a consumer i definitely know what caller design i'd be picking for my own system but i can't help but feel the pressure for board partners i just really doubt they have the r d budget to engineer and compete with something like this now that doesn't seem to be the case with the rtx 3080 founders edition which does seem to be outperformed by larger triple fan aftermarket car designs from board partners but this card does have some other things going for it like a very compact two slot design and this will lead us into our next video where we'll be taking a look at how well suited this thermal design is for many mini itx cases until then a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next one\n"