The Nvidia RTX 4090 takes the crown for the fastest graphics card available today, but it’s not without concerns. Of course, there are extreme prices, starting at $1,599 in theory, but today they typically sell for over $2,000. There is also the issue of size. The smallest of his traditional RTX 4090 cards occupies at least three slots, often overlapping the fourth slot. However, if you want to build a custom liquid cooling loop with the compact RTX 4090, Alphacool has the solution.
Optimum Tech posted a video review of what is probably the smallest 4090 water block available today. Alphacool ES Geforce RTX 4090 Reference Design with Backplate (opens in new tab). I have Compatibility list for various GPUs (opens in new tab)but the cooler in question — model number 13395 — currently only lists compatibility with a few models. One of those models is the Inno3D used in the video, the other is the KFA2 RTX It’s a 4090SG. Galax RTX 4090 SG (opens in new tab)Sadly, neither are readily available in the US.
There are many other RTX 4090 water blocks, including EKWB’s single-slot option, but none are as compact as this Alphacool model. Of course, you’ll need to add the rest of the liquid cooling loop, and for a 450W TBP, it certainly warrants using dual radiators.
However, this particular cooler is not designed for home users. It’s part of Alphacool’s line of enterprise coolers, and the idea is that you can cram up to four RTX 4090 cards into a single server or workstation. We recommend adjusting to run at a significantly lower power limit. This makes it a “poor man’s” version of the RTX 6000 Ada with half the VRAM.
However, replacing a single $6,800 (or more) professional card with multiple consumer cards is an interesting value proposition. There’s arguably more overlap between Nvidia’s professional and GeForce lines, and current prices for RTX 4090 cards still tend to hover in the $2,000+ range. It’s a lot of money to throw at a GPU for, but if you’re doing AI training or inference (including stable diffusion), 3D rendering, or other specialized work, it can be a “bargain” of sorts. I have.
Hopefully someone builds a quad 4090 setup with something like this Alphacool water block and posts a video and pics. Because for many of us it is most likely to buy such a card.
