NVIDIA has unveiled new guidelines under its “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Card” initiative which should usher in a new era of compact PC builds.
NVIDIA’s SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards Are Designed For Compact PC Builds, New Guidelines To Help Vendors Select The Best Components For Gaming PCs
A few months back, we exclusively reported that NVIDIA was working on a new ecosystem to empower SFF and compact PC builds. Today, NVIDIA is finally taking the curtains off of its SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards guidelines which will help AIB partners, component manufacturers, and gamers alike who are looking forward to building compact PCs.
Enthusiasts around the world are choosing Small Form Factor chassis for their dream rigs.
However, when building around modern enthusiast GPUs, finding the best components for a SFF (Small Form Factor) build can be challenging.
NVIDIA has developed form factor guidelines to help Gamers pick the best GeForce RTX GPU and components for their SFF build.
These guidelines provide dimensions and clearances between enthusiast graphics cards and SFF chassis, creating a standard for AIC and chassis manufacturers to help make building SFF Gaming PCs a great experience.
NVIDIA to Wccftech
We have learned that NVIDIA is working with its partners which not only include AICs (graphics card makers) but also chassis, PSU, manufacturers, etc, to put together components that are perfect for SFF builds. Why this is so important because SFF builds are generally more constrained when we compare them to traditional builds. There’s the matter of space constraint, airflow & the right PSU choice.
So as a part of its guidelines for the SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Card ecosystem, NVIDIA has laid out dimensions of 304x155x50mm for a graphics card to be compliant with the new standard. These cards shouldn’t exceed 2.5 slots which is the sweet spot for smaller PC builds but most vendors will try to go the dual-slot route.
NVIDIA AIB partners offering these designs include ASUS, GALAX, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, PALIT, PNY & ZOTAC. Furthermore, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Founders Edition cards such as the 4070 & 4070 FE will comply with these guidelines. It looks like the main focus is on the RTX 4080 SUPER & RTX 4070 series cards since they fall in the “Enthusiast” graphics card category. The RTX 4060 series are the more mainstream option.
The graphics cards are just one side of this initiative. The second major part is the chassis and NVIDIA has worked with several of the top PC case manufacturers including ASUS, Cooler Master, Corsair, Fractal Design, InWin, Lian Li, MSI, NZXT, Phanteks, Silverstone, SUGER, & Thermaltake to make sure that their current and upcoming Mini-ITX & SFF cases ensure these guidelines for SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards.
The guideline parameters set for PC cases is that they should offer at least 312×154.5x50mm (2.5-slot) clearance for an NVIDIA SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce card.
Now you must be wondering if this opens up the space for more Mini-ITX and compact NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs. Well, the answer is both a yes and no. You see, NVIDIA won’t be offering any compact variants of its own since this is mostly a partner-driven program but partners are free to experiment with their solutions to offer GPUs that comply with the “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce” label.
The new initiative will encourage partners to innovate around high-performance graphics cards which can be paired with ITX motherboards within SFF PC builds and that sounds good for the entire PC segment. The first graphics cards and PC cases are now available from leading retailers.