If you've been wondering if Nvidia's next generation of GeForce cards will need even bigger coolers than those we currently see, then fear not, it seems the chip giant has been experimenting with heatsink and fan designs to cope with power levels no greater than those seen with Ada Lovelace andwhich has said that information from a cooling module factory points to Nvidia testing four designs at the moment, ranging from 250 W up to 600 W.
Take the GeForce RTX 4090 as an example—the entire card has a total board power limit of 450 W. It doesn't always get anywhere near that level but it can use more than that, as we discovered in our. If its cooler could only cope with 450 W of heat at best, then at those times when it goes over the limit, the chip's temperature would rapidly increase to the point where it just shuts down.
As to why 250 W is the lowest power limit that Nvidia is testing for, it might be looking at boosting the performance of its entry-level models. Thehas a total board power limit of just 115 W and while it's very good at sipping energy, its overall performance compared to the previous generation wasn't a huge step forward. If the RTX 5060 is a lot more potent, then its power consumption will undoubtedly be higher than the RTX 4060's.