NVIDIA RTX 4090 The main graphics card has been making headlines lately because of Cable Melting ControversySo why not double up on the cable fun? That’s the idea with the new Galax 4090 board that comes with two 16-pin power connectors – instead of the usual – but there’s a lot more to this story than first meets the eye.
Let’s look at the graphics card itself first, which like Tom’s devices (Opens in a new tab) Reports, it’s the Galaxy RTX 4090 HOF. HOF is an acronym for the card maker’s “Hall Of Fame” versions, which are boards made specifically for attempts to beat world records and top the ratings of overclockers. And that last point is the Galax 4090 key here, and we’ll come back to that shortly.
The RTX 4090 HOF hasn’t been released yet, but images of the board have come out courtesy of Northern hardware (Opens in a new tab)where the site obtained it from Norwegian expert Verkluker Rauf, to whom the Galax HOF model was sent for testing.
The images show the dual 16-pin 12VHPWR connector ports, and also that the board offers 24 + 4 Phase VRM (Heavy Duty Power Delivery Setup), with the BIOS allowing 1,000 watts of power to be delivered to the GPU. Yes, 1000W, compared to 450W TGP from screen cardsand 600 watts or so is typically seen when pushing a flagship with overclocking.
Analysis: What is wattage, again – isn’t that just a silly idea?
A GPU that draws 1000 watts and has dual 16-pin power connectors? Isn’t that just ridiculous now? Well, yes, it is, but the whole point of the Galax RTX 4090 HOF is that it pushes it to the limits for Overclocking Trying to set world records, as we mentioned.
On the face of it, people might be concerned that all of this seems very unwise given that there are concerns about cable melting when using the adapter (4 x 8-pin to 16-pin) to fit the 4090 to an ATX 2.0 power supply. Could two cables double any risk – perhaps, if they were bent tightly to fit inside the enclosure (as is the assumption about the causes of the alleged fire hazards with the switch setup, though we won’t really know until Nvidia completes its investigation).
However, this whole controversy is rather a red herring here, as the kind of overclockers who would buy this HOF (Limited Edition) card are the ones who would use it with a high-end ATX 3.0 power supply that doesn’t. t need adapters anyway. (There’s a PSU with dual 16-pin connectors, in case you were wondering – Thermal Tec Toggle Power GF3 1650W, with possible others to come.)
In fact, if we go even further, most of the extreme designs probably won’t have this 4090 HOF computer case Absolutely, I will use cooled liquid nitrogen. So talking about melting the converter cables is redundant in the case of a card like the Galax HOF version, and indeed the two cables are actually required to facilitate the (ridiculous) maximum possible power of 1000 watts.
As for whether paying for 1,000 watts is wise, well, maybe not, but for people who will be fiddling with these devices, it’s safe to say they know what they’re doing and have safety precautions in place (hopefully).
To sum up: this is not a card for high-end consumers who use inverters, but a card for connoisseurs trying to break world records with basically weird cooling. Needless to say, the premium for the already expensive RTX 4090 will be bumped up significantly when it comes to the amount of slot the HOF version will blow in your wallet. By the way, no price has been confirmed yet.
Note that Galax wouldn’t be our first choice of graphics card vendor for the average user, and it’s not a brand we’d normally recommend for building a ready-to-use PC—but as noted, the HOF Series is a very different kettle of fish. Galax has actually produced HOF versions since Nvidia’s 900-series GPUs (with no real competition now in this extreme arena, as Kingpin cards no longer exist since EVGA left the graphics card scene).