Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look – Tear Down

Taking the cooler apart and taking a closer look, it’s a pretty standard affair. We have quite a large shroud that wraps around the heatsink, and has connections for the three fans, along with the RGB rings, and a separate connector for the RGB Gigabyte logo on top of the plastic shroud.

Moving onto the heatsink, it’s a thick boy and I think at this point, is the largest I’ve seen on any Gaming OC card, and is the main reason why the RTX 4090 is so thick. Though I’ve only had two RTX 4090’s in my possession, it’s safe to say that all 4090’s have large coolers, so it’s not like the Gaming OC is overly large when compared to the competition though I am eager to see how it compares to other higher-end models within Gigabyte’s lineup, like the Master version as you’d like to think they would have superior cooling solutions.

The heatsink itself is made up of as many fins as they could fit in and comprises a vapour chamber and heatpipe design. Due to this, it’s actually split into two large areas which are separated between the ten copper heatpipes though only 8 of them stem from side to side, while 2 actually loop back into the area around the copper plate that will cool the GPU core. While the plate for the GPU is copper, the other surrounding cooling components look to be made from aluminium, including the various pieces of metal that will aid in keeping the memory and VRMs under control.

The backplate also appears to be made from aluminium and isn’t the thickest I’ve ever seen, but it’s welcomed either way as it will help in reducing sag by giving some strength to the PCB itself and will assist in cooling as well and that’s evident from the thermal pads that sit between the backplate and the PCB itself to help the transfer of heat. There are a few cutouts, which seem like they serve no purpose other than for aesthetics, apart from the large cutout that I touched on earlier to help with the airflow.

The PCB is actually quite a bit smaller than what you’d expect at 230mm long and 140mm in height, and straight away you’ll see that the PCB itself is jam-packed full of components. Around the CPU core, we find our Micron branded GDDR6X memory chips, of which NVIDIA has clearly learnt the error of their ways with all of them being on the front of the card. On both sides, there are a ton of power stages. 20 in fact to handle the GPU voltage while there are another four, one in each corner to help manage memory voltage so slightly up on the three-phase design on the Founders Edition 4090 from NVIDIA..

At the top right of the PCB, we see our 16-pin power connector, which as we know is rated for up to 600 watts of power draw and scattered around the board are various connectors for the triple fan cooler.

For the specs of the card, Gigabyte has kept them the same as the NVIDIA Founders Edition, which doesn’t make complete sense to me as it’s called the gaming OC but in theory should be able to boost for longer due to the cooling being much bigger and beefier than what’s on the Founders Edition.