Discussion To hell with nVidia's definition of SFF ready. What should be the actual SFF standard?

[Medeyer]

nVidia's standard of a SFF ready graphics card is beyond parody and just declares whatever it produces to fit this mould. Instead of having the marketing department of a multi-billion dollar corporation declare what it wants it to be, the standard should be decided by actual SFF enthusiasts, much in the same way that a SFF case should be sub 19L. I have proposed this question to those in the discord previously, and it has resulted in much debate.

So if you'd like to share your opinion, state what standard dimensions you think it should be (L x W x H) along with the power connection (e.g 8+6-pin) plus whatever else you think should be applicable.

For me, a single 8-pin with a max length of 254mm and fit in 2 slots (with a little wiggle room, but certainly not 3). I'm indifferent to open vs blower style cooler, though I suppose that's dependent on the specific case.

Also, I think there should be a separate category for ITX card, which would obviously be 170mm max length.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

I'd say that something like the AMD reference 7800 XT is the absolute biggest for me. Height and thickness should ideally stay within the boundaries of a dual slot PCIe bracket.

I miss GPUs like the AMD R9 Nano or the Asus DirectCu Mini series :

 

[Phuncz]

I'd start with an ITX card as a base, with 170mm length, two slot height, default PCI slot width. So basically this:

While not the smallest, it seems to be an attainable base card size because it actually adheres to two common measurements, namely 2-slot height and the PCB board width. Length-wise it also stays within an mITX motherboard's footprint, which in most builds will also be a minimum dimension.

 

[SaperPL]

First and foremost - the card vendor should take into account how much space does the power connection need. Stating the dimensions of the card excluding the required space for the cable is counter productive if the card goes wider. Cards should stick to the placement of power connectors within the PCI-express reference card design outline: if they want to go up into oversize, the PEG or 12VHWPR connectors should be recessed like here:

But we can't have nice things, so rather than asking for this if we leave room for gerrymandering, I'd say - you want a SFF.NET Approved! badge, your card is reference sized. Reference sized means those 6mm on the left side over the bracket is how far the card goes from the bracket's screw mounting part. It's what makes most of the sense to stick to what is specified in PCI-e specs instead of tinkering with this dimension.

Secondly, the card should 2-slot wide, 10.5"/267mm long. This allows the card to be a 3-fan open air cooler design:

Thirdly coming back to the space required for the power connector, the cable needs to sit within the card outline and doesn't affect the dimensions for the case, meaning the cable can escape through the bottom of the card, like in this sapphire design:

Vendor's incentive to do this should be that the whole side of the card can be used for branding or some feature that is self-promoting the card in cases with tempered glass windows.

Spoiler: Here are mock-ups of cards like this

It can go over the ATX motherboard this way - 267mm > 244mm - the card needs to be ATX/mainstream friendly as well, so apart from "stealth cable" design for the looks, it should be easily compatible with ATX boards:

Inno3D's 4070 Stealth was closest thing to this that we had so far (the sapphire radeon above is not released, but it's heavily oversized card). The problem is that the cutout goes through backplate which potentially can collide with case if it's not taken into account that cables can be behind the card in that spot:

TL : DR: 10.5"/267mm dual-slot triple-fan strictly pci-e reference sized card with connector space handled within the card in a way the cable goes out of the card on the side where PCB's pci-e connector is.

 

[HWI]

I'd say that something like the AMD reference 7800 XT is the absolute biggest for me. Height and thickness should ideally stay within the boundaries of a dual slot PCIe bracket.

The reference 7800 XT isn't a true 2 slot design, the fan shroud exceeds 2 slot. I wanted to run a 7800 XT in my Velka 5, but couldn't since not a single one is actually 2 slot. I ended up with a 4070 FE, which is a true 2 slot and I think that should be a requirement to be considered "SFF ready".

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

The reference 7800 XT isn't a true 2 slot design, the fan shroud exceeds 2 slot. I wanted to run a 7800 XT in my Velka 5, but couldn't since not a single one is actually 2 slot. I ended up with a 4070 FE, which is a true 2 slot and I think that should be a requirement to be considered "SFF ready".

Well, I never said it was two slots. I only said it was the absolute biggest and that "IDEALLY" a GPU shouldn´t be thicker than 2 slots and taller than the PCIe bracket.

Sad thruth is that 2 slots GPU are called SLIM and normal height RAM are called Low Profile

 

[vinnyoflegend]

1) Width must be dual-slot. Complete non-negotiable. Not 2.2, 2.5, 3, 4....2 slots. 40mm period.

2) Length is controversial. If SFF cases are allowed to go up to 19L, then they could support really long cards. However, I'd want it cut-off at the width of a motherboard PCB. i.e, there are cases that can fix M-ATX or even full ATX, but both of those have a width of 244mm.

3) Height is often disregarded except in special cases, but the closer to the official full height spec 111mm, the better.

So the absolute ideal? 111mm height, 40mm width, and length of 244mm or less.

 

[SaperPL]

2) Length is controversial. If SFF cases are allowed to go up to 19L, then they could support really long cards. However, I'd want it cut-off at the width of a motherboard PCB. i.e, there are cases that can fix M-ATX or even full ATX, but both of those have a width of 244mm.

Going up to 267mm allows for some shenanigans over the length of the mATX/ATX board like I've shown in photos/screens from solidworks above. This would be an opening to not have to take account of the power cable room on top/side or at the back of the card, and effectively make smaller cases thanks to that.

 

[vinnyoflegend]

It may be a useful size but I think that’s when we are no longer talking about SFF cards at that point. 267mm is a standard size for the many of the workstation cards RTX A4500 up through A6000, etc.

 

[Phuncz]

The new Powercolor Reaper 9070XT seems to adhere to the universal sentiments in this thread (adhering to PCI card dimensions): 304mm*127mm*42mm
So it seems like it's atleast very possible still to have a 300W TDP card with those measurements.

Reaper AMD Radeon™ RX 9070 XT 16GB GDDR6∣PowerColor

PowerColor

www.powercolor.com

 

[yeshyyyk]

Hi, I strongly agree, the SFF-ready is just to have a minimum bar that anything can pass

My take is this: compare TDP and size...



Based off this, my opinion is that cards should easily be > "200 Watts per liter or 200W/L". The R9 Nano is approaching 10 years old and easily did it, we should get better over time not worse?

So e.g. worst case (lol) I have a Meshlicious that could fit let's say a 4 slot 15cm wide 30cm long card

so 200"W/L" * (8cm*15cm*30cm/1000) = 200 * 3.6L = 720W GPU in order to satisfy this

but e.g. the 5090 FE has a great cooler design that's >300W/L so even at 575W (80% of this) it actually only takes 1.66L (45% of this), because it's >50% more "space-TDP efficient"

On the other hand the 5080 FE reuses the same dimensions cooler and so at 360W (50% of this) it still takes 1.66L (45% again), since it's only 10% better as expected





In an ideal world, we could also do some noise-temperature normalized testing, along with size

So my thinking is that if a card is larger (i.e. under 200W/L), that is "okay", but it MUST use that to be ("equivalently") quieter / cooler...or cheaper (the irony is that more premium materials would only be used on the small and large designs?)


And then if you want to get more crazy you could add in weight, since copper is heaver than aluminum but better otherwise? And people who want to travel with their PC might be willing to pay premium to get both "space-efficient" cooling and "weight-efficient" cooling.



It's depressing to me to see very tangible improvements in SFF CPU coolers but not in GPU coolers...Imagine if over 10 years your CPU cooler options became 2x larger / cooled 2x less... and people still called it a SFF cooler and recommended it (simply because it vaguely matches dimensions of popular cases)

 

[SaperPL]

In an ideal world, we could also do some noise-temperature normalized testing, along with size

So my thinking is that if a card is larger (i.e. under 200W/L), that is "okay", but it MUST use that to be ("equivalently") quieter / cooler...or cheaper (the irony is that more premium materials would only be used on the small and large designs?)


And then if you want to get more crazy you could add in weight, since copper is heaver than aluminum but better otherwise? And people who want to travel with their PC might be willing to pay premium to get both "space-efficient" cooling and "weight-efficient" cooling.



It's depressing to me to see very tangible improvements in SFF CPU coolers but not in GPU coolers...Imagine if over 10 years your CPU cooler options became 2x larger / cooled 2x less... and people still called it a SFF cooler and recommended it (simply because it vaguely matches dimensions of popular cases)

Adding additional requirements to the stack like this is a bit counter productive. Assume that if we set the form factor, the vendors will try to make those cards make sense on their own as well. And also that there will be people that would want a higher tiered GPU in such form factor despite the increased noise. We had people using blower 1080TIs in small builds for example.

Less requirements are good, the more you add to the pile, the more likely vendors will ignore this.


I had the idea that IF vendors would care about the "award" badge from SFF.NET, we could have three main tiers for those:

• SFF.NET Ready! - Standard
  Conforms to PCI-E standard card dimensions, dual slot up to 305mm / 12" long
  
  
• SFF.NET Ready! - Gold
  Conforms to PCI-E standard card dimensions, dual slot up to 267mm / 10.5" long
  Power connector and cable handled flush inside the card outline with cable going out on the pci-e connector side
  
  
• SFF.NET Ready! - Platinum
  Conforms to PCI-E standard card dimensions, dual slot up to 170mm / 6.7" long
  Power connector and cable handled flush inside the card outline with cable going out on the pci-e connector side

With that said, after laying out these, the 170mm tier is something that gets tricky here - handling the cable inside 170mm means the PCB would probably be even smaller, while if it would be allowed to just stick out at the back, so potentially we would have same PCB between Gold and Platinum, just the different length of cooler, it would be weird that higher tier doesn't solve the cable problem.

Also having entry "standard" tier is an opening for vendors to go initially after this, see that it doesn't really affect their sales and ignore the whole thing altogether.

 

[Solo]

I miss GPUs like the AMD R9 Nano or the Asus DirectCu Mini series :

Absolutely this lol.

 

[yeshyyyk]

Adding additional requirements to the stack like this is a bit counter productive. Assume that if we set the form factor, the vendors will try to make those cards make sense on their own as well. And also that there will be people that would want a higher tiered GPU in such form factor despite the increased noise. We had people using blower 1080TIs in small builds for example.

Less requirements are good, the more you add to the pile, the more likely vendors will ignore this.


I had the idea that IF vendors would care about the "award" badge from SFF.NET, we could have three main tiers for those:

• SFF.NET Ready! - Standard
  Conforms to PCI-E standard card dimensions, dual slot up to 305mm / 12" long
  
  
• SFF.NET Ready! - Gold
  Conforms to PCI-E standard card dimensions, dual slot up to 267mm / 10.5" long
  Power connector and cable handled flush inside the card outline with cable going out on the pci-e connector side
  
  
• SFF.NET Ready! - Platinum
  Conforms to PCI-E standard card dimensions, dual slot up to 170mm / 6.7" long
  Power connector and cable handled flush inside the card outline with cable going out on the pci-e connector side

With that said, after laying out these, the 170mm tier is something that gets tricky here - handling the cable inside 170mm means the PCB would probably be even smaller, while if it would be allowed to just stick out at the back, so potentially we would have same PCB between Gold and Platinum, just the different length of cooler, it would be weird that higher tier doesn't solve the cable problem.

Also having entry "standard" tier is an opening for vendors to go initially after this, see that it doesn't really affect their sales and ignore the whole thing altogether.

I guess I'm just going from a more analytical / testing perspective, not intending for OEMs to use it. Just the W/L is sufficient, after that consumers can look at reviews for fan noise, weight, thermals. It would just be misleading e.g. with something like the (worst case) Asrock passive cards?

Your standards are "fine", it's just I guess I want to be more complicated and account for TDP?

And a ~100W card / low profile would have no distinction, single slot has no distinction and to me it's nothing special if you put those in even 170mm, they can go even smaller / some cases require even smaller

 

[Arboreal]

Absolutely this lol.

We should be thankful for “your” input in the creation of the Zotac 2 slot ITX length RTX 4060 Solo, I presume it’s named in your honour…

 

[ignsvn]

Speaking about Zotac, another masterpiece they did is the GTX 1660 Super Twin Fans

It's 175 mm long (same length as the R9 Nano) yet having two fans that no doubt helps a lot with the cooling.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Another important thing, all outputs should be on a single slot. Stacked outputs are a pain when you want to single slot a GPU.

 

[SFFMunkee]

Another important thing, all outputs should be on a single slot. Stacked outputs are a pain when you want to single slot a GPU.

And just a PITA when fiddling around behind a PC case IMO

In my personal view, if you want to call something SFF-Ready AT ALL it should be based on the original PCI/PCIe spec



So I would suggest absolutely max of 111mm tall, 40mm thick (i.e. DUAL SLOT not 2.1, 2.2, etc) with considerations for power connectors and cable routing etc. for full sized cards.

Badge / Category	MAX Length (mm)	MAX Height (mm)	MAX Thickness (mm)	Example Card
SFF Long	312	111	40	IDK if there are any true dual-slot cards that could fit here???
SFF Standard / Reference	267	111	40	AMD Reference RX 6700 XT AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Specs AMD Navi 22, 2581 MHz, 2560 Cores, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 12288 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 192 bit www.techpowerup.com nVidia RTX 3070 FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Specs NVIDIA GA104, 1725 MHz, 5888 Cores, 184 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 1750 MHz, 256 bit www.techpowerup.com
SFF Short	225	111	40	PowerColor Fighter RX 6600XT PowerColor Fighter RX 6600 XT Specs AMD Navi 23, 2589 MHz, 2048 Cores, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 128 bit www.techpowerup.com
SFF ITX	150-180	111	40	HP RTX 3060 Single Fan HP RTX 3060 OEM Specs NVIDIA GA106, 1777 MHz, 3584 Cores, 112 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 12288 MB GDDR6, 1875 MHz, 192 bit www.techpowerup.com PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX PowerColor RX 5600 XT ITX Specs AMD Navi 10, 1560 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 6144 MB GDDR6, 1750 MHz, 192 bit www.techpowerup.com
SFF LP	190	69	40	Gigabyte RTX 4060 LP GIGABYTE RTX 4060 Low Profile OC Specs NVIDIA AD107, 2475 MHz, 3072 Cores, 96 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 2125 MHz, 128 bit www.techpowerup.com
SFF LP ITX	170	69	40	nVidia RTX 4000 SFF Ada NVIDIA RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation Specs NVIDIA AD104, 1560 MHz, 6144 Cores, 192 TMUs, 80 ROPs, 20480 MB GDDR6, 1750 MHz, 160 bit www.techpowerup.com

Anyways, just my 2c

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Lenovo have a nice ITX sized RTX 4060, never seen it before. It has some interesting dimensions (150mm length).

 

[SFFMunkee]

Lenovo have a nice ITX sized RTX 4060, never seen it before. It has some interesting dimensions (150mm length).

View attachment 3707

Similar to R9 Nano and older ITX cards!