GPU PCB Breakdown: RTX 4090 Founders Edition

#nvidia #rtx4090

[andersjjensen]

It is clear at this point that Founders Edition and Reference Design are two vastly different beasts entirely. Founders Edition exist to make Nvidia look good. Reference Design exists to give AIBs some kind of starting point to make an "MSRP" card that allows them a razor thin margin while being significantly worse than an FE card.

[graysenbilliar]

Would love to see PCB breakdowns for the Aorus Master 4090 and the Asus Strix 4090. It’s really helpful when picking out a card to water cool. No one else has content like this.

[CmdrSoyo]

afaik the I2C bus needs to be re-locked by the card each time it starts up. and you can bypass the lock by simply shorting the SDA and SCL pins when the card is booting up. Der8auer once did that on a RTX 2080 i belive. that way the I2C bus will stay unlocked after boot and you should be able to use an EVC2 with it.

[Toasty-qw]

Honestly we can probably blame Nvidia for the partner cards having worse VRM's. Partners have much slimmer margins to work with and that's mainly due to Nvidia charging way too much for the dies, and also telling partners to plan for 600W of cooling for a chip that ended up pulling 450W.

Nvidia has much larger margins to work with.

[amariel]

I think looking at PCBs should be a priority from the point of view that we as viewers get vital information when making our choice in purchasing a 4090, since we're paying super premium prices to begin with we don't want to get ripped off!

[OTechnology]

The 4090s also don't have massive transient spikes because the core just does not want to suck as much juice as the 30 series cards. Meaning they can make the power circuitry simplified. I have shunt modded my Palit RTX 4090 and it literally does not want to use much more than low 500Ws even in Timespy Extreme at 3000MHz+ and 1.1v.

[crittybity]

Do MSIs Suprim next please, I can't workout how their 26+4 phase vrm works with the 2891 chip. Also, the Suprim x and suprim liquid x have slightly different capacitance on the back.

[brusik]

Even if I don't understand most of what you are saying I still enjoy listening to whatever you are saying. I always learn something new😀

[OTechnology]

The three shunt resistors on the power connector is to balance power draw between the connectors. The Palit RTX 4090 I have only has 2 shunts. This is similar to older Nvidia FE cards as well.

[whyme]

2 of those shunts are in series -> increasing resistance to measure the lower power of the memory supply without using different resistor types.

[ledooni]

Definitely interested in the Strix and Suprim which are already up on TPU as well as TUF, Master, Gaming OC and Trio. And a shoutout to what you think is the best reference PCB to put a water block on would also be nice. Is there any specific components of certain brands that are more likely to cause coil whine? I tested several Strix 3090s and all of them had horrible coil whine, some of them earlier models, some of them later revisions but all the same in that regard…

[ColeMarkusen]

Looks remarkably similar to the 3090Ti founders card. Almost to the point where I'd be curious if a 3090Ti FE waterblock would work on a 4090 FE. Will never get sick of how neat these dense little cards are.

[kajurn]

It's actually impressive how small the PCB is? You talked about unpopulated phases and how some 4090 models have them, wonder if the rumored 4090ti will also include those and mostly reuse the same PCB.

[Apollo-Computers]

i have so been looking forward to these pcb breakdown videos from you!! I dont know what gpu im gonna get for ln2 this gen, normally i always get a kingpin.

[solomonshv]

which 4090 PCB would you say is the best 4090? strix or suprim? i think the suprim has more robust hardware, but i don't know if the extra spacing between the core and VRM will have any effect on the card. thanks

[stormrider]

Thank you!
I miss those PCB analysis!
Can you do that with all the other partner cards? Please

[cyberletho]

So what cards should we avoid in your opinion?

[scottxiong]

Would love to see cost analysis if possible.

[gonrico]

ASUS TUF next please! J C has a high res breakdown for reference.

[Cinnabuns]

I don't want a 4090 or a 7900 XTX, I want a 9800 Pro... the new one in a year. That card back in the day dominated. Nothing close.