Nvidia just gave the PC gaming industry a reason to shrink its biggest graphics cards and produce smallish cases. It’s not what I expected, but I think it might actually help. Read before you judge, friends — I was definitely ready to call out some Nvidia BS, but I’ve mostly come around.
Technology
Nvidia’s small GPU initiative will keep graphics cards large — but I’m glad it exists
When leakers revealed last month that Nvidia would help steer its graphics card partners toward smaller gaming PCs, I began to daydream. Might we finally see a genuinely small Nvidia powerhouse like AMD’s old R9 Nano? Could Nvidia at least convince partners to produce two-slot GPUs like many of its own Founders Edition cards?
Unfortunately, no. Nvidia’s just-announced “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards” aren’t actually that small — even a 2.5 slot thick, 304mm long, and 151mm wide RTX 4070 can qualify. That means supposedly “SFF” GPUs will not fit into my SFF case, and I have a hard time calling these “SFF” at all.
But if you, like me, want to help smaller gaming PCs get a larger foothold, this could help — because it’s not just about the cards; it’s about knowing you can fit a certain amount of graphics horsepower in a given case because both the case and the card identify themselves as compatible with one another.
“I’m giving them a guideline to say, hey, leave this much space, and then you’ll be able to fit an enthusiast graphics card in there like a 4080, a 4070. That’s the purpose of this program,” Nvidia senior desktop products director Justin Walker tells me.
Indeed, the list of cards that Nvidia is sharing today only includes RTX 4070 or higher: it’s not promoting a fat 4060, for example.
Today, figuring out if a given card will fit is often a matter of painstakingly trolling manufacturer websites for length, width, and height twice: once for the card and once for the case. Now, you might just be able to look for “SFF-Ready” and move on with your day. You may still have to hit up those manufacturer websites, though, as Walker says there’s not necessarily going to be a Newegg sort filter for “SFF Ready” or a badge on the actual product yet.
He tells me these guidelines should reduce uncertainty for case manufacturers, too: “I’m making a small case, and I want it to fit a high end graphics card… right now I have no idea, there’s so many sizes and shapes. Right now I don’t know how to make a case that fits everything.” Now, there’s a target.
While I personally still wish Nvidia had tried harder to shrink the sizes of partner cards themselves — again, their own Founders Edition cards are generally just two slots thick! — there is some hope for more such GPUs. Walker says it’s no mistake that there’s only a single RTX 4080 on the SFF-Ready list, and he hopes more partners will rise to the challenge.
“It takes a lot of work and a very intentional design to put a 4080 in this form factor,” he says. “I get that it’s not a tiny Mini-ITX thing, but I want to let someone be able to put a 4080 into that case.”
Speaking of which: just a few days ago, hardware leaker kopite7kimi attested that Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition card will have a dual-slot cooler.