Nvidia just gave the PC gaming industry a reason to shrink the size of its largest graphics cards and produce smaller cases. It’s not what I expected, but I think it might actually help. Friends, please read this before you judge – I was definitely ready to call some Nvidia crap, but I’ve basically accepted it.
When leakers revealed last month that Nvidia would be helping its graphics card partners move toward smaller gaming PCs, I started daydreaming. Might we finally see a true small Nvidia powerhouse like AMD’s old R9 Nano? Can Nvidia at least convince partners to produce two-slot GPUs, like many of its own Founders Edition cards?
Unfortunately, no. The “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce cards” Nvidia just announced aren’t actually that small, even the 2.5-slot-thick RTX 4070, which is 304mm long and 151mm wide, would qualify. This means that so-called “SFF” GPUs don’t fit into my SFF case, and I have trouble calling these “SFF” at all.
But if you’re like me and want to help your small gaming PC get a bigger foothold, this can Help – because it’s not just about the cards; it’s about knowing you can fit a certain amount of graphics power into a given situation because both the situation and the card are considered compatible with each other.
“I gave them a guideline and said, hey, leave this much space, and then you can put enthusiast graphics cards in there, like the 4080, the 4070. That’s what this program is about,” Justin Walker, Nvidia’s senior director of desktop products, told I.
In fact, the list of graphics cards Nvidia shared today only includes RTX 4070 or higher: it’s not advertising the fat 4060, for example.
Today, determining whether a given card will fit often involves painstakingly locating the length, width, and height on the manufacturer’s website twice: Once for card, once for case. Now, you might just look for “SFF-Ready” and get on with your day. However, you may still need to visit these manufacturers’ websites, and as Walker said, there won’t necessarily be an “SFF Ready” Newegg category filter or a badge on the actual product.
He told me that these guidelines should also reduce uncertainty for case manufacturers: “I’m making a small case and I want it to fit a high-end graphics card… right now I don’t know, there are so many sizes and shapes. Now I don’t Know how to make a case that fits every situation. Now, there’s a goal.
While I personally still wish Nvidia would work harder to reduce the size of the partner cards themselves, their own Founders Edition cards are typically only two slots thick! ——Hopefully more such GPUs will appear. Walker said there’s nothing wrong with having only one RTX 4080 on the SFF-Ready list, and he hopes more partners will rise to the challenge.
“Putting the 4080 into this form factor requires a lot of work and very meaningful design,” he said. “I know this isn’t a micro Mini-ITX device, but I wish someone could put a 4080 into this case.”
Speaking of which: just a few days ago, Hardware leaker kopite7kimi confirmed Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition card will come with a dual-slot cooler.
