Teardown
The Palit GeForce RTX 4070 Dual 12GB is relatively quick to disassemble, especially since the screwing of the backplate is done completely from the back. This makes disassembly a bit easier, only the two extremely tight-fitting connectors for the fan and LED could only be pulled off with special pliers. Again, I suspected that they were glued, but that wasn’t the case. So you have to be careful lately, because after tight comes off.
PCB layout and components
Let’s first start, as always, with the PCB of the Palit GeForce RTX 4070 Dual 12GB. NVVDD is still the most important voltage and the need to save money results in a voltage converter design with only a total of 6 real phases (analogous to the FE and most MSRP cards) and the resulting 6 control circuits for NVVDD alone. Thus, you save quite a bit compared to the RTX 4070 Ti, but this is still acceptable considering the significantly lower TDP.
Nevertheless, the card has an interesting peculiarity, because the voltage converter, which is positioned individually above the unpopulated RAM slots in all other cards (including the FE), is completely omitted. It is replaced by an additional DrMOS placement at the bottom left of the NVVDD voltage converter row. This has an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage: The cooler becomes simpler (heatsink can be shorter) and thus cheaper. Disadvantage: This phase is connected to the motherboard slot, which significantly increases the current flow there.
In the end, however, it all looks just as meager as the FE, which may be ok considering the price. One also uses separate PWM controllers for NVVDD (GPU core) and FBVDDQ (memory), because the top models among the PWM controllers are unfortunately much too expensive. Therefore, the good and well-known uP9512R from UPI Semi has to do the job again. It can easily generate the 6 phases and is significantly cheaper than the models from Monolith, which is, however, completely sufficient. A second PWM controller in the form of the small uP9529 controls the two phases for the memory. Both controllers are located on the backside of the board. Directly between them is another NCP45491 (pin compatible to the uPI uS5650Q) for monitoring the four 12V rails (3x Aux and 1x PEG).
All used DrMOS, also the one for the memory, are rather cheap products from OnSemi, which we already know from the Founders Edition. The NCP302150 with 50A peak current used in all control circuits for NVVDD and FBVDDQ (memory) integrates a MOSFET driver, a high-side MOSFET and low-side MOSFET in a single package. This chip is specifically designed for high-current applications such as DC-DC buck power conversion applications. This integrated solution reduces board space requirements compared to a discrete component solution. The coils used for NVVDD and the memory have an inductance of 220 nH, and the capacitors are in cup form, which is less expensive.
The 12V rails on the 8-pin connector are combined into a single rail directly after the socket, another one is connected to the PEG, and is only slightly used for NVVDD. The BIOS is in the usual place and the generation of the rest of the extra-low voltages is as usual. The GDDR6X memory chips are manufactured by Micron and bear the model number D8BZC, which is decoded to MT61K512M32KPA-21:U. They are specified for a clock frequency of 1313 MHz (21 Gbps GDDR6 effective). There are no more special features.
Teardown: The cooler
Palit (unfortunately) relies on the usual cheap fans, in this case just two. With the 9.5 cm rotor diameter (opening 10 cm), the two identically aligned fans, each with 9 rotor blades without a circumferential ring, emit a rather wide airflow towards the cooler, which leads to more turbulence and losses at the air intake and below the cooler cover (tearing noise).
A total of four nickel-plated 4-mm heatpipes made of copper composite material lead from the heatsink to the end of the cooler, part of which also protrudes over the very short PCB. Here, there is then a welcome “draught”, as no PCB can slow down the airflow. All four heatpipes also lead towards the slot bracket. This is also where the much more stable VRM heat sink is located compared to the MSI RTX 4070 Ventus, which does its job well this time. The single 1.8 V phase on the card’s underside and the two voltage converters for the memory are also actively and validly cooled by cooling surfaces on the large GPU heatsink.
The pads used are ok, but not from the top shelf. Thus, you’ll find a bit of cost-down here as well. The plastic backplate is screwed to the cooler cover and the cooler (spring screws). This stabilizes the board almost perfectly and prevents it from bending in the horizontal setup. I already wrote something about the airflow and we can see the appropriate cutout for it here (left in the picture).
And now we come back to the slot bracket, as promised. Since the slot bracket is firmly connected to the board and the backplate, Palit also stabilizes this angle with two letters additionally with the cooler cover. This guarantees a consistently good contact pressure on the areas to be cooled (VRM).
- 1 - Introduction, technical data and technology
- 2 - Test system in igor'sLAB MIFCOM-PC
- 3 - Teardown: PCB, components and cooler
- 4 - Gaming performance
- 5 - Power consumption and load balancing
- 6 - Transients and PSU recommendation
- 7 - Temperatures, clock rates and thermal imagin
- 8 - Fan curves and noise
- 9 - Summary and conclusion
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