Nvidia is working with its partners on what it calls SFF Enthusiast GeForce GPUs. The idea is to develop PC cases around recent graphics cards, which tend to be larger than ever.
With the recent focus on performance and cooling, graphics card manufacturers went ham on cooler sizes. Thanks to that we had behemoths such as Zotac’s 38cm long RTX 4090D PGF and the RTX 4080 Noctua edition offering serious cooling capacity. However, what they brought in performance they lacked in compatibility. Even some ATX chassis don’t have enough space for these monsters – especially if you like vertical mounting.
This left users who prefer smaller machines or simply lack space reliant on less powerful or older GPUs. Thankfully, that will change soon. Rejoice, SFF (Small Form Factor) PC lovers, Nvidia has heard your cries. Nvidia is working with its partners on guidelines for graphics card, chassis, power supply, and motherboard manufacturers that account for recent size increases. The hope is to provide better compatibility for SFF builders.
These rules will include dimensions to fit as many graphics cards as possible while considering clearance to not starve the fans of air. The latter is fairly known among vertical GPU fans as upright triple-slot cards tend to be so close to the side panel that airflow and cooling get hurt. Not to forget the increased noise due to the fans ramping up.
Of course, we’d prefer a push towards smaller graphics cards since it would support existing SFF cases. Size is the sacrifice for the power of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 on Amazon, though. Besides, it’s not just Nvidia that suffers from bloated boards as high-end AMD cards aren’t much better. Regardless, this is a welcome move. Even if it doesn’t make things dinkier, it should help building a compact machine become easier and less stressful.
