On my considerably cramped Micro-ATX motherboard, the M.2 slots for right this moment’s teeny-tiny SSDs are between the PCIe slots…which implies that the drives sit proper beneath my graphics card. By way of thermal administration that is fully frickin’ bonkers lower than supreme. That goes double if you wish to use a PCIe 5.0 drive with optionally available large coolers. Asus might need discovered an answer with its newest graphics card design, which lets an M.2 slot piggy-back proper on the rear of the graphics card itself.
The Asus GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB Twin OC + 2280M.2 SSD Enlargement slot (sure, that’s its full product identify oh my god) does what it says on the field. On the rear of the cardboard is a full-sized 80mm M.2 slot, suitable with as much as PCIe 5.0 speeds and guarded by an additional warmth protect. As PCGamer notes, the remainder of the cardboard is kind of similar to different RTX 4060 Ti designs — the “twin” in that big identify means twin followers, not twin GPU chips.
The cardboard was revealed earlier this 12 months, however is just now displaying up at retailers, particularly the Finnish retailer Multitronic. It’s going for 560 euro (roughly $595 USD at right this moment’s trade fee), which is a 30-euro premium over the model of the cardboard not packing a M.2 secret. Presumably the brand new variant will make its means into different markets quickly.
Contemplating how cramped fashionable motherboards can get, particularly within the smaller sizes, I believe this add-on is a genius transfer from Asus. Whereas not an on the spot resolution — for instance, putting in an SSD drive on the again of my graphics card proper now would additionally overlap with my chunky CPU air cooler — it opens up quite a lot of flexibility. That’s very true in case your PC case has quite a lot of unused vertical area. I’m hoping this turns right into a development.
