Don't buy Gigabyte 4090 Xtreme Waterforce.

[MonitorFlicker]

Let me help you dodge a bullet. Don't buy Gigabyte 4090 Xtreme Waterforce. It is made like crap.

 

I bought two 4090. Another one is Strix. Others are all sold out. They have been used for two weeks. Here is my impression:

 

1. This version of Gigabyte 4090 is built like plastic.

(1)The shroud looks cheap.

(2) The copper plate is machined with scratches. It doesn't cover components such as the VRM of the memory the way air-cooled GPU does.

(3) A part of the north core VRM is only covered 1/3. It's more like Gigabyte adjusted that part of the PCB upside down but forgot to communicate with the guys who made the copper plate. The components that are less than half-covered likes this will have higher temperature, higher chance to degrade overtime to the point of burndown. 

(4) One of the thermal pads is off-centered.

(5) The 360mm radiator is made of light aluminum instead of copper.

(6) The fans are not new. They seem to be refurbished from the previous 3090Ti. I can still see the debris left on the blades washed by electronic cleaning fluid.

 

2. It's not exactly quiet when the fans go to 1300rpm. The fans are 3000rpm. They are only slightly quiet at 900rpm which is 30% of the max speed. And the fans keep spinning at 30% all the time. They don't stop. In comparison, ASUS Strix let the fan stops when idle. Strix is also quieter when at the same load.

 

3. This is critical. The default fans of Gigabyte hit to max like a jet every now and then under load. Something triggered the annoying behavior. The BIOS update didn't fix it. When you control the fans through software like MSI afterburner. The fans go to the double speed of the set parameter. Multiple people have the same issues.

 

4. The power is limited to 500W. After the BIOS update, the power is limited even down to 490W. No overclocking protentional. The website of official Gigabyte says it is OC version. But the package of the box has no mention of the OC version. It is just a normal PCB despite the premium price.

 

5. The temperature reaches to 58c-63C easily at 490W. Any more than that the fan will spin louder.

 

6. The possible culprit of the fans hitting the max is a sudden temperature rise. Some components in a certain area are not properly cooled. They can heat up to 100C threshold multiple times such as the memory temperature. No more BIOS updates can fix high temperatures like this.

 

7. The thermal pad on this GPU is also a cheap adaption due to incompetent design:

 

(1) The pad is brittle enough to deform that you might need to replace them after every disassembly.

 

(2) The distance between VRM chips is 2.78mm. The copper plate distance for each type of chip is 3.00mm. The main power delivery chips have a 1.5mm thermal pad. So the side chips require a 1.28mm (1.5mm+2.78mm-3.0mm) thermal pad. 

 

 

(3) There is no conventional 1.28mm thermal pad. This can cause a lot of variations to overheat components. The thermal pad is usually the thinnest at the end. And the north VRM at the end is only partially covered. This is why a large portion of burned chips reside at the edge of a PCB. A lot of things can go wrong with a design like this. Who the hell thinks this is a good idea?  

 

(4) The actual pad comes off with the plate is 1.20mm short of touch after disassembly. If using a 1.5mm thermal pad instead, it also causes less pressure on the memory and core.

 

(5) So you have to hammer a 1.5mm thermal pad down to 1.28mm rated at 15W/mK. You don't buy a premium card to disassemble it multiple times to deal with hassles.

 

 

8. Overall the cooling capacity of a cheaply made copper plate is limited. It is engineered in a way the plate doesn't even cover all the VRMs as the heat dissipation of that plate is less than 500W. The thermal pad is also uniquely required at 1.28mm. These Gigabyte engineers don't do proper calculation, they do ill calculation to make core temperature looks good with a risk to burn components elsewhere. The overall result is the fans hit like a jet in the combination above. This is also why a so-called water-cooled GPU with incompetent cooling capacity in disguise has a worse power limit down to 500W instead of 600W compared to the air-cooled GPU.

 

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The conclusion:

 

The value of this card is bad. It is not comparable to the ASUS Strix in terms of almost everything such as build quality, noise level, OC performance. Strix is built like a piece of art in comparison. The premium product is all about the user experience with as little annoyance as possible. The Gigabyte AIO 4090 has a crap-tier user experience not even mentioning there is a risk of burn of 100C components in the long run. Gigabyte didn't test everything.

 

So don't buy this GPU. A thin piece of loose bare cheap-machined copper with scratches won't cut it when other components need to be cooled down properly.  

[PDifolco]

That validates my view : buy the cheapest card you can get on a hi end model, add a watercooling kit, same overall cost than a "hi tier" same card, much better cooling and noise, and maintenance is easy ...

[Mick Naughty]

Being gigabyte, I wouldnt buy anything they make. Especially when there's better options and don't need to spend much more.

[MonitorFlicker]

26 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

That validates my view : buy the cheapest card you can get on a hi end model, add a watercooling kit, same overall cost than a "hi tier" same card, much better cooling and noise, and maintenance is easy ...

It depends on what you want.

An actual premium card from Kingpin or ASUS has the potential of a wider range from XOC to aesthetics, not like this crap in disguise that cheap out materials.