Gigabyte takes the Geforce RTX 3000 series to new thicknesses

Nvidia’s presentation of the Geforce RTX 3000 series and “Ampere” to consumers has unsurprisingly given rise to a race among partner manufacturers in order to surpass each other with increasingly exclusive and beefy cards. One manufacturer that is not afraid to go its own way regarding cooling graphics cards is Gigabyte, which now chooses to launch a duo of really porky graphics cards.

The models go by the name Aorus Extreme, where variants of both RTX 3080 and 3090 have been published on the manufacturer’s product pages and take up no less than 3.5 expansion slots. The increased thickness is used by the manufacturer to pair a steam chamber base with countless heat pipes and large amounts of aluminum for convection. Three fans are also found, two of 115 millimeters and one slightly smaller of 100 millimeters.

With almost comical proportions, cooling performance is hopefully not a problem, nor are connection options. Gigabyte promises no less than three Displayport 1.4a and as many HDMI 2.1 connections, with simultaneous connection to a maximum of four monitors at a time. The specification table also speaks of warranty periods of four years, while the specification for the size of the graphics card is only marked as to be declared.

The models under the Aorus Extreme flag appear to be Gigabyte’s top models in the RTX 3000 series at launch and form part of the manufacturer’s four model series – including the other Eagle, Gaming and Master. Where the Aorus Extreme variants are undoubtedly based mostly on thickness, the supposed volume product under the name Gaming instead seems to stick to two expansion slots, while Eagle and Master take up another half space.

Whether Gigabyte backs up the Aorus Extreme cards with a power supply as lavish as the cooling solution remains to be seen at the sharp launch of Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 3000 series later in September.

Can you sacrifice four expansion sites in favor of supposed silence? Are four expansion slots way too much for a graphics card? Discuss in the forum!