ASUS Has Shown off RTX 4060 Ti Featuring an M.2 Slot

ASUS has shown off an RTX 4060 Ti Dual card which features a unique addition of an M.2 slot on the back of the card.

ASUS RTX 4060 Ti With M.2 Slot

A video of this card was shared by ASUS’s Tony Yu on BiliBili (Via VideoCardz) and shows off a new RTX 4060 Ti which makes use of the unused PCIe lanes on lower-end cards such as the 4060 Ti which only use 8 PCIe lanes. In the video, we are shown a concept RTX 4060Ti dual model which has an M.2 slot on the rear of the card hosting a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD which is running at Gen 4 speeds. In the screenshot below from the video, the SSD reaches 6.8GB/s, only slights below its expected read speeds plus only reaches a temperature of 43C which is about expected for an SSD.

Is This A Good Concept?

I quite like the sound of this idea when you put it as simple as making use of unused PCIe lanes. However, there are some concerns firstly my own concerns. This design is for lower-end cards which don’t make use of all PCIe lanes which is a market that is a market that I don’t see as having many SSDs and not really requiring more than what is on their board. Tony Yu himself also pointed out some possible issues surrounding the concept which highlights an increase in power draw, plus the potential heat issues that may arise. In this design, the PCB has been cut to allow for airflow and for the SSD to connect directly to the GPU cooler with thermal pads. On a good note though this looks to be a literal take on Microsoft’s Direct Storage plus how does a 2TB virtual GPU memory sound?

What do you think of this concept? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.