An intrepid modder has shrunk Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti, making it a much more compact graphics card that fits into smaller PC cases.
This impressive feat of DIY PC components was posted on Reddit by mud TechTaxi, like VideoCardz reports.
We should note up front that the modified RTX 4070 Ti is still just a prototype, and TechTaxi admits that at this point “still more work needs to be done to make it more polished and fully functional,” and they can’t promise that. the project will become reality. (Previous projects have been completed, mind you).
In any case, it looks very impressive, with the RTX 4070 Ti shrunk down so that it’s a single-fan, two-slot graphics card (the original is a beefy three-fan, three-slot card, although we got 2.5 have seen). final versions out there – we’ll come back to that point later). It’s only 173mm long and just under 42mm thick, so it fits nicely into smaller form factor PC cases (Mini-ITX).
As you might imagine, this shrinking process comes with compromises, namely underloading the card – reining in its performance – to ensure the temperature remains at an acceptable level. But even with the volume turned down, the RTX 4070 Ti can still be a very powerful performer for running the best PC games.
Analysis: Shrinking ambitions
Wait a minute, you might be thinking: isn’t Nvidia abandoning the RTX 4070 Ti now that the RTX 4070 Ti Super is coming to replace it? Well, in theory this is the case and production of the RTX 4070 Ti will be halted. (That hasn’t been officially confirmed by Nvidia, but it’s the point, and it makes perfect sense – there’s basically no room for either card in the Lovelace range).
However, the Modder believes that the custom cooler and setup shown here should work just fine with the RTX 4070 Ti Super – assuming this prototype is proven to actually work in its RTX 4070 Ti form.
Even then, you obviously can’t buy this DIY graphics card. Although TechTaxi does say: “If it works, I might make a few for sale to those interested.”
We’ll see, but the interesting thing here is that TechTaxi has made other pared-down DIY graphics cards in the past, with versions of a dual-slot RTX 4080 and a dual fan dual slot version of an MSI RTX 4070 Ti.
The latter could even have been the inspiration for MSI to produce an official 2.5-slot MSI 4070 Ti Ventus 2X about four months after the DIY card appeared. Or at least TechTaxi’s innovation seems the likely source of inspiration – that and the interest in the project show the enthusiasm of small form factor PC builders.
So maybe – just maybe – we might see an official version of a compact RTX 4070 Ti Super for small PC cases in the future. More broadly, the annoyance over, say, chunky RTX 4060 graphics cards may strike a chord and perhaps see vendors making trimmer, lower-end boards (which really shouldn’t be chunky, slot-eating monstrosities, let’s be honest, but there are 2.5-slot incarnations of the 4060 out there).