MSI unveils GeForce RTX 3090 AERO with a “turbine” in the style of the ancient GeForce GTX 480
No wonder there is a saying: “Everything new is well forgotten old.” So Micro-Star International (MSI) decided to go back in time and find inspiration in it for creating a new series of AERO graphics accelerators. The latter repeats the characteristic design features of the reference version of the GeForce GTX 480 video card with the Fermi architecture, which, for a minute, is already 11 years old. They decided to start right away with heavy artillery – the flagship GeForce RTX 3090.
The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 AERO version is made in a two-slot design, which in theory simplifies the installation and combination of two accelerators via the NVLink interface.
The card is equipped with a cooling system with a partially open radiator, which is cooled by a tangential fan. It drives through the radiator and blows the heated air out of the PC case through the holes on the video connector strip.
As mentioned above, a similar externally and constructively solution was used in the reference version of the GeForce GTX 480 – one of the hottest (in the literal sense) and controversial decisions of NVIDIA in its entire history.
For the GeForce RTX 3090 AERO, the manufacturer stated the reference value for the frequency of the GPU, which in Boost mode is 1695 MHz. Meanwhile, MSI uses an unreferenced full-size printed circuit board with a blank CO coating. In other words, there are no open areas even on the right end of the accelerator. We could see a similar solution quite recently, for example, in the professional graphics accelerator NVIDIA RTX A6000.
Another interesting feature of the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 AERO cooling system is its backplate. It covers only half of the printed circuit board of the video card, the length of which is 300 mm.
The presence of a plate is very important for the GeForce RTX 3090 since the card uses a double-sided arrangement of memory chips that need to be cooled somehow. Therefore, even such a decision using an incomplete-sized plate looks completely justified.
The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 AERO is equipped with four video interfaces: three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1. The novelty receives additional power at the expense of a desk of 8-pin connectors. The manufacturer claims a nominal power consumption level of 350W for the card.
