THE graphics cards RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti only need 50% of the lanes of a PCIe x16 port. Palit therefore opted for an x8 connector.
In search of ever more compact graphics cards, Palit only has to offer low profile models to please everyone.
17 centimeters long for the StormX
When testing the GeForce RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti, we noticed that NVIDIA remains faithful to its logic: the x60 cards only use 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes. In fact, if a x16 connector is well used, it is for the practical side of the thing: all motherboards have it.
Without knowing very well the why and how, a manufacturer decided to settle for a PCIe x8 connector on its GeForce RTX 4060 – but not on its 4060 Ti, go figure the logic – to end up with cards at the ultimately quite original design.
This manufacturer is Palit and if its graphics cards are not always very well distributed in France, we can count on three models of RTX 4060 with a “short” connector: RTX 4060 StormX, RTX 4060 Dual and RTX 4060 Dual OC. Three models that stand out for their compactness.
Alas, no low profile model
In this little game, it is also the StormX which holds the palm with a cooling system based on a single fan. In fact, the length of the card is only 17 centimeters when competing models are more around 20 to 25 cm.
In its communication, Palit gives no real reason to justify this choice of a PCIe x8 connector. One thing is certain, the graphics card will then not be able to benefit from the – physical – stability of an x16 connector. We talk about “physical” stability, because on the software side, there is nothing to worry about.
NVIDIA’s GPU isn’t able to take advantage of the extra PCIe lanes of an x16 slot anyway and, as we verified when testing the RTX 4060 Ti, performance isn’t affected in any way while the bandwidth of such a solution is far from being saturated.
No more problems on the power side, since the graphics card is mainly powered by the 8-pin socket placed on top. On the other hand, we regret that Palit did not take advantage of the compactness of the StormX to make it a low profile card (half height).
Source : VideoCardz
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