News ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Mini

Zotac 1080 Ti Mini pictured, including an Arctic Storm version!
Full details below courtesy of TechPowerUp:

https://www.techpowerup.com/233683/zotac-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-mini-pictured

https://www.techpowerup.com/233684/zotac-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-arctic-storm-mini-pictured-too

 

[Kmpkt]

I have a ton of respect for him, but I just can't take a risk with a modded brick regardless of his stellar reputation. I would only buy from a respected company that manufactures according to all laws and regulations.

I think this will be the stumbling block for the G-unique products going forward (and is certainly the problem I have, particularly with his AC-DC products). I'm kinda hopeful he can find someone to partner with and get all of the requisite certifications etc. to come to market in a legitimate way.

 

[Curiosity]

As someone moving into a customod mini very soon, I'd like to see a 1080/ti with a tall, but ITX length PCB, sort of like the gigabyte 1070.
As is though, I'm trying to think if I could reasonably cut holes in the mini to make this fit.

 

[QuantumBraced]

As someone moving into a customod mini very soon, I'd like to see a 1080/ti with a tall, but ITX length PCB, sort of like the gigabyte 1070.
As is though, I'm trying to think if I could reasonably cut holes in the mini to make this fit.

I don't think that's going to happen for the 1080 Ti as you'd have to make it a lot taller to keep the length at 175mm. The card is already taller than the bracket. Let's do some basic math:

Zotac 1080 Ti Mini area = 211 x 125 = 26,375 mm^2

To keep the same area at 175mm length, you'd need the card to be 26,375 / 175 ≈ 151 mm tall.

That's assuming they can simply rearrange everything. For comparison, the Gigabyte 1070 Mini is 131 mm tall, so 20mm shorter. And the CustomMOD Mini (And Hutzy XS before it) only support up 131mm height, although it may be possible to redesign the GPU side to accommodate 151mm... I'm not sure, you may have to mod the PCIe bracket.

Regardless, for context the card would actually be exactly as tall as the EVGA 1080/980 Ti Kingpin, which is the tallest card I know of and doesn't fit in the NCase M1. No one will design a supershort supertall card, because the only scenario it makes sense is in these back-to-back ultrasmall cases that 99.99% of PC users on this planet have no clue exist The height will totally defeat the purpose of the supershort length.

If they could only make it a little shorter, possibly a little taller, then we could fit it in something like the S4 Mini or another case designed around that length. Even if you could reduce the total PCB area, you couldn't make the cooler much smaller, they are already struggling with making this size a cooler work with a 250W chip.

 

[Curiosity]

@QuantumBraced good point, I'd missed that it was taller than PCIE spec already, definitely not possible to have a 1080ti that fits, you're right.

I guess for people in cases with limitations like the CM mini will have to wait and see if Vega ends up having anything small and super powerful, or start cutting holes.

 

[Acalanata]

My concern is for the fact that only in this generation of Nvidia have been generated top-line video cards. In previous generations, only the intermediate model had option of ITX friendly (maximum 175mm).

Will the next generation VOLTA have top-sized ITX or top-line models, or will have only intermediate models (such as 1170)? I don't want to use a 1080Ti forever with a size case for it.

 

[Curiosity]

I think part of the reason we're seeing more now than before is power requirements for high end cards going down.
It's

 

[QuantumBraced]

I think it's more better engineering of PCB/coolers/power delivery and the rise of SFF. Otherwise, the top nVidia card has been ~ 250W for some time.

 

[Acalanata]

I think part of the reason we're seeing more now than before is power requirements for high end cards going down.
It's

That's a great argument, I had not thought about it, but there's always a possibility that they could increase their video card consumption to increase their graphical performance, so if they did, we lost our upgrade to the high-end cards.

See AMD with its VEGA Frontier, TDP of 300W in air-cooled and 375W in the version with air cooler.

As the market standard has always been 175mm for ITX video cards I'll wait for the next generation of high end video cards to see if there will be a standard size for them (such as 211mm of this Zotac 1080Ti).

 

[VisualStim]

I think this will be the stumbling block for the G-unique products going forward (and is certainly the problem I have, particularly with his AC-DC products). I'm kinda hopeful he can find someone to partner with and get all of the requisite certifications etc. to come to market in a legitimate way.

Shenzhen doesnt work that way lol, theres a reason why Shenzhen is the first place Im visiting after I move to Taiwan. To look over quality of his work. Just because he builds his own PSUs without certs doesnt mean his work isnt quality, Certs and IP are there to squeeze out the little guy. Shenzhen is changing that.

 

[QuantumBraced]

He needs to get hired by HDPlex or SilverStone or better yet start his own company in China or in the West... His product can completely change the mainstream SFF and gaming laptop landscape if he took it out of our community and out on the big market. If I was SilverStone or Corsair, I would hire him and start a new line of DC-DC + external power brick PSUs, then design ultrasmall cases/systems around them and make a lot of money. Right now, no one else in the world is making his product. So if he does go that route, he better know his worth.

 

[jeshikat]

then design ultrasmall cases/systems around them and make a lot of money.

That's the problem, ultra small means niche means not enough sales to justify R&D for a big company like Corsair.

Any PSU company could easily make something similar, all the modern power supplies use DC-DC to derive the minor rails off the 12V anyway, so it's not like it's new or uncommon tech.

I think better distribution would help him quite a bit, but I think getting hired by a big company would just stifle his innovation.

 

[Kmpkt]

It's more a question of liability and warranty than quality in my mind. I'm sure that Gury knows what he's doing and that the quality is good, but if the unit breaks I'm not certain that I would have a reasonable warranty path to get a replacement or repair. If I buy a unit from HDPlex, I can ship to California, Germany or Hong Kong depending on where in the world I live. Furthermore from my own experiences if I have an HDPlex unit fail, Larry will just take my word for it and ship me a new one at his cost. If I buy from Gury, I'd have to ship to Shenzhen which is substantially more expensive.

The other issue of concern to me is liability. If the unit has a catastrophic failure and I have a small (or large) house fire, who's liable for that? I frankly wouldn't want to explain to my insurer that a modded power supply from some guy in Shenzhen was responsible. I deal with insurance companies a lot in my line of work and I'm pretty sure as soon as they could prove you were using something without certifications they'd try to pull the rug out from under you. You can certainly look at certifications as being something that large companies use to squeeze out the "little guy", but I guarantee your insurance company wouldn't look at it that way.

He needs to get hired by HDPlex or SilverStone or better yet start his own company in China or in the West... His product can completely change the mainstream SFF and gaming laptop landscape if he took it out of our community and out on the big market.

This is what I was getting at. If Gury had a partner in the west (or did it himself) and got all of the requisite certifications for the western markets, I think he could do extremely well. In the long term, 12V systems definitely have a bigger upside than 19V systems and is where I would love to see this market segment go.

 

[QuantumBraced]

That's the problem, ultra small means niche means not enough sales to justify R&D for a big company like Corsair.

Any PSU company could easily make something similar, all the modern power supplies use DC-DC to derive the minor rails off the 12V anyway, so it's not like it's new or uncommon tech.

I think better distribution would help him quite a bit, but I think getting hired by a big company would just stifle his innovation.

I agree and disagree. Ultra small = niche is a bit of a catch-22 assumption. It's niche because no company has been bold enough to try it. And frankly because many haven't even considered it. When they think SFF, they think 10-12L at the very least, it doesn't cross their minds that you can make an affordable 3.3L case that houses a full-on Mini-ITX + a 1070 if you invested some R&D into a new line of G-Unique-like PSUs. I honestly think if Corsair brought that to market and resisted tacking on 3L of wasted space and decoration, it would be a huge hit and generate a lot of buzz. The demand is there, but no major product has tested it yet and the "gaming" market is very stale - and that's a bad formula for innovation. It's similar to smartphones in the late 2000s, it took one company to break the mold and then the demand was off the charts. This wouldn't be nearly as groundbreaking, but I think it's an analogous situation. Companies can decide to take on a risk and make an investment if they see an unfilled niche with potential, that's what business is all about. I do think eventually we'll see this type of 12V 400-500W brick + mini DC-DC board product hit the mainstream. It's just too good and SFF is becoming more and more mainstream, it's just a matter of who's going to do it first.

As you say, it's not a huge investment as that's exactly what modern PSUs are like, they are 12V bricks. You just gotta take the DC-DC part out, make it sealed and passive, put it outside and then make a small board to fit into a 24-pin slot that channels and converts all the non-12V electricity. SilverStone's new 450W fully passive and sealed SFX PSU that you brought to our attention with your excellent piece on it is basically that, just take the connectors out and put it outside and you have a 450W brick ha.

 

[EdZ]

I honestly think if Corsair brought that to market and resisted tacking on 3L of wasted space and decoration, it would be a huge hit and generate a lot of buzz.

They'd (not just Corsair, this is endemic) have to fight years of their own marketing that jumbo-sized coolers and temperatures far below Tj_max are necessary. A compact, effective and efficient cooling solution would be dismissed as inadequate by their own literature of "bigger is better". Heatsinks for RAM is an excellent example: they are completely unnecessary for anything other than DDR2 FBDIMMs (that you never saw in a consumer machine anyway), but even today no manufacturer could release a high-end DIMM without chunks of pointless metal & plastic attached without risking a massive backlash.

 

[jeshikat]

Ultra small = niche is a bit of a catch-22 assumption.

Not really, the only way to go really small is to give up features (multiple 360mm rads!) so it inherently narrows down the potential market the smaller you go.

As you say, it's not a huge investment as that's exactly what modern PSUs are like, they are 12V bricks.

It wouldn't be that difficult from a engineering perspective (at least I don't think so) but certification and testing is $$$.

One company we talked to at Computex said it wasn't worth bothering with a custom PSU for anything less than 10,000 units. And that's ordering direct from the OEM, so that wouldn't necessarily cover marketing, profit margin, etc.

 

[Curiosity]

(multiple 360mm rads!)

Ahaha
It drives me crazy when people discount cases because they lack potential to fit monstrous amounts of high end hardware.
95% of the time when someone says they plan to do that stuff, they don't. And then they have this huge case for no reason.
I actually have a friend who used to complain his full tower was too big, but when he finally upgraded he got a DG-87.
which I just can't understand at all.

 

[VisualStim]

so this GPU is going to be "taller" right? aka not fitting a S4mini?

 

[Curiosity]

It doesn't look nearly as tall as the gigabyte 1070, which can be made to fit into the S4 Mini, so I'd imagine it'd fit in that regard.

 

[VisualStim]

well im undecided. since AMD is overpriced now and I cant go R9 Nano.

and since the ZOTAC 1070 mini needs the extended bezel (as well as the 1080 mini) I might as well go for the 1080mini (instead of the 1070) or should I even wait for the 1080ti

 

[Boil]

I believe there were allusions made towards Gigabyte working on a 1080 card that would fit in their ITX-sized eGPU chassis...?!?