ASUS showcases a unique RTX 4060 Ti graphics card with two integrated M.2 slots
This custom ASUS RTX 4060 Ti gives PC builders two additional M.2 SSD slots
ASUS China’s Tony Yu has showcased a custom RTX 4060 Ti GPU design that offers PC builders a unique feature. This graphics card is not just an RTX 4060 Ti GPU, it is also an add-on card that supports two PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs. This prototype allows PC builders to add more M.2 storage to their PCs, a potential godsend for users of budget-oriented motherboards.Â
The idea behind this RTX 4060 Ti prototype is simple. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 Ti uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 connection, so what could ASUS do to utilise the bandwidth of the full 16x PCIe 4.0 slots that are available on most motherboards? ASUS’ answer to this question is to add more SSDs. Using a 16x PCIe slot and some PCIe switches, ASUS’ prototype RTX 4060 Ti GPU can use a 16x PCIe 4.0 motherboard slot to connect to an RTX 4060 Ti graphics card and two PCIe 4.0 4x M.2 slots.
With Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti having a 160W TDP and an 8-pin PCIe power connector, Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti GPU design has access to a potential 225 watts of power. 150W from the GPU’s 8-pin PCIe power connector, and 75 watts through the GPU’s PCIe slot. This leaves ASUS with plenty of available power to run two PCIe 4.0 SSDs.Â
Currently, ASUS appears to have no plan to release this RTX 4060 Ti prototype as a retail product, though this GPU does showcase what is possible when GPU manufacturers are creative.Â
Years ago, AMD had launched Radeon Vega graphics cards that featured an M.2 slot. This product was the Radeon PRO SSG, a graphics card that features an M.2 slot and utilised connected SSDs as additional GPU storage. This drive allowed AMD’s Radeon PRO SSG to work with extremely large data sets using on-board memory, enabling huge performance boosts in some workloads. AMD has never revisited this GPU SSD concept, or shown any indication that they ever plan to do so.
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