This might be a bit random but I just figured out that different GPU AIBs use different fan sizes for their blower designs. For whatever reason I always assumed that they all stuck to the one used in the reference design.
How wrong I was...
Nvidia uses a 65mm radial fan in the reference design of the GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 and their respective or non existent Ti versions. When I saw that Navi now uses an 80mm fan, I got intrigued. What do AIBs use?
Let's get this out of the way: The bigger the fan, the slower it can spin to still move the same amount of air and the quieter it is. This comes with the added advantage that a bigger fan creates a lower frequency which is less annoying than most smaller fans.
Vega and Polaris use 70mm fans in their reference (blower) design.
Navi now uses 80mm? Could it be that someone listened to us and decided that they won't murder our ears with it? Sounds very likely.
But the most interesting part is still to come.
Pascal was a very efficient architecture when it was released and still is. It's just that Touring used way bigger dies and way more cuda cores in their respective performance classes which raised the TDP quite significantly. A 2060 with 160W? That is 1070 level power consumption which explains the new reference or 'Founders Edition' design with dual axial fans.
Here it comes:
ASUS, as many other AIBs, still has a blower style card for the RTX 2000 series and their fan is also 80mm. Most other AIBs don't outright write the fan diameter in their marketing material so you have to start digging up reviews. Lo and behold, most other AIBs use smaller fans. The most common one is 65mm which is expected since it is usually used in Nvidias Founders Edition cards but 70mm and 75mm fans also turned up. I then bumped into the MSI Vega 56 and surprise surprise, it also uses a 80mm radial fan even though some reviews label it as a 'reference design'.
This got me thinking. Why is it that we don't see more 80mm fans in graphics cards? Are they that much more expensive than smaller diameter fans or are they simply too good that they would cut into sales of more expensive GPUs?
I can't tell and will most likely never know but it weirds me out that the 1080TI uses a smaller diameter fan than a Vega 56.
Something is wrong here.
