Sometimes Dell Actually Tries: Dell RTX 3090 Review, Tear-Down, & Benchmarks

[@GamersNexus]

Grab a GN Modmat or Mouse Mat here: store.gamersnexus.net/ We reviewed a disappointing Dell GPU here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fnfEe42nZpinqJo Dell made a good PSU, though, and you can find our review of it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qGjLf6Crnt-AeJo And it made one of the worst pre-builts we've ever seen, the G5 5000: kzbin.info/www/bejne/anWwmGmeitqXfqc And Lenovo gave Dell competition for bottom of the pre-built barrel, which you can see here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZDFYaGao5qif8k

[@susandefelice5509]

You gotta at least tell us what kind of cookie it is

[@FaceyDuck]

Hey Steve, since you have given many CPUs the title of "Waste Of Sand", maybe you can call Dell "Waste Of E-waste"!

[@sketchtherapy1218]

Tech Jesus" Soul > Cookies

[@PurpleLEANKrabs]

Tease at the beginning lol

[@yourhandlehere1]

Tell me tell me...did a better power supply help my 3080 run better? PNY XLR8 Revel Epic-X (1440-1710) Originally with a TT "tough" 750w gold. It topped at 1995MHz. It was stable at 2200 with Afterburner but I don't do that often. Had it for a few months, never saw it go higher on it's own. Recently got the newest Corsair RM1000x. Beefier cables come with it. I wanted my draw to stay nearer the 50% area. Then I noticed my card was running at 2050MHz and I had to check and make sure I hadn't left Afterburner boosting it. Nope. I've seen it hit 2100 now "out of the box".

[@twiggsherman3641]

I spent 10 days, took 7 videos, and 25 pictures, trying to convince them that the green line across the top of my screen wasn't just the Windows background. They had me retake the picture of the serial number, because it was at an angle, even though that meant taking the monitor off the stand. Meanwhile with Corsair I accidentally caught my wireless dongle with my knee, emailed them asking where I could BUY a new one, and they sent me one, DHL overnight from Taiwan, for free. Dell is the worst company on the planet.

[@GamersNexus]

I can see why you'd feel that way after that experience. That's insane. Sounds really painful.

[@theexplosionist2019]

Worst company on the planet because they didn't do exactly what you wanted? EA are the worst company in the world.

[@Zosu22]

Yeah their service representatives can be pretty... persistent. I can't speak to their consumer product support, but I've had an overall neutral-good experience with their support for their business machines though.

[@NoName-to5xl]

Any mobile network is the worse.

[@guyfawkes8873]

@@theexplosionist2019 m8 he had a defective monitor and they tried to make him give up on getting it warrantied by frustrating him into submission. That's fairly shitty right there. So why Are you siding with Dell on that?

[@paladingeorge6098]

"ITS BETTER THAN DELL...S OTHER PRODUCTS AWARD" - Steve, probably.

[@ncxo1975]

Here you seem lonely, have my reply

[@eldibs]

A Dell product paradoxically worthy of the "It's Better Than Dell" award.

[@vollkerball1]

absolute savage!

[@TheJayRoth]

I was going to say that 😥

[@Castaa]

Like they haven't done enough. Leave it to Dell to break the space-time continuum.

[@whatdafarkenhell7110]

Dell have always been hit or miss, I bought a second hand optiplex and it is still running strong, except the graphics of the intel chip died so i threw a placeholder card I bought the first week the AMD1600 came out at it and it has been happy since. Who knew the stupid little bracket in my AMD Radion9000 series box was to fit it into an optiplex SFF, winning by accident.

[@jasonvandyke5401]

Makes sense though. This product itself is better than the company that produces it :)

[@bloodybucket213]

"Dell is a confusing company right now," That checks out.

[@theredturtle4471]

@Chris from a tech nerd and pc builder stand point i really dislike dell and have never like them acept there moniters are ok, or atleast used to be

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Actually it is all BS. Dell's 1660 Super was of average build quality, and so is this 3090. Only thing happening is that GN does not know how to measure memory temperature. That is why they got 110 C last time /which is ridiculous, card would stop working) and now they got acceptable 90 C . As for the rest, Dell spends enough money to avoid recalls or God forbid being sued. Not terrible, not great.

[@Emetsys]

@@aleksazunjic9672 If you know how to measure temperature, go on. You are saying that the other 3090 have better cooling on the VRAM measuring with the same method?

[@aleksazunjic9672]

@@Emetsys I'm saying that for measuring memory temperature on junctions you need lot more equipment and knowledge . You cannot just take thermal camera and do it. GN presents itself as almost scientific channel (unlike other which are more geared towards entertainment) . Therefore they should update their methods if they really want to be serious. Otherwise, they would just look silly like in their 1660 Super video.

[@garysharkey17]

Dell is more interested in thier enterprise products.

[@helpfultomcruise2233]

Better than dell award. An insult? A compliment? Now I'm confused Edit: glad to see steve felt the same by almost giving them the better than dell award

[@yourhandlehere1]

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - Bilbo Baggins

[@Zaprozhan]

I'm not sure if inconsistently bad is better than consistently bad. No matter the company, applaud the good work, and excoriate the bad!

[@sonicboy678]

Normally, that would be damning by faint praise, but in this case, it's more like genuine impression.

[@jimmyl2191]

With their PSU and GPU, if they keep that up, we'll be able to make a whole "better than Dell" computer with Dell parts only

[@Vekstar]

I would actually watch that

[@jeffscomp]

The psu is very proprietary

[@xavierrodriguez2463]

@@jeffscomp I think if you know the pinout you can make adaptors well except for the fact that theres no 5v or 3.3v you would have to make something to step it down, and it would also have to be effiecient and stable.

[@jeffscomp]

@@xavierrodriguez2463 it'd be too much hassle. You can just buy a seasonic and be done with it

[@gamewizard1760]

You won't because Dell computers are so proprietary, they aren't even compatible with each other. The ability to cross match parts between different Dell machines is extremely limited.

[@parcosmaulo1]

so.. who made this for you, dell? whoever that was, you should work with them more often

[@Megalomaniakaal]

So long as they learn to measure and bend heat pipes better, yes.

[@Oofsmageroo]

Its a msi card. My 3080 variant died after 3 days so i think its hit or miss. The replacement has been good for a few months.

[@cldpt]

@@notmyfaultthisishappening3795 does MSI even use a vapour chamber or a backplate heatpipe with flow-through air on their top tier cards, such as the huge Suprim or the Gaming X Trio? Anyway, the thing that hurts me most about MSI and still makes me put them waaay down the list of mobo and gpu purchases, is their reticence to offer 3y stock or extended warranty options. For a company their size, it's odd and should be putting off a lot of buyers

[@jshico3417]

*angrily yells at the gpu* "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?!"

[@user-dn5bx2iu3e]

I wonder if it was a mistake to only cover half the memory towards the IO or if it had originally been designed with a heat pipe in-mind only cut back on costs last min.

[@GamersNexus]

Great point!

[@ionstorm66]

Maybe having the heatpipe that long made things worst due to the length?

[@ItsReaxxion]

i thought the same but again i saw there is not much room for the pipe to route to the other memory modules because of the NVLink (SLI?) cutout.

[@Mallchad]

​@@GamersNexus That's what I thought. It looks like the other 2 parts have the thermal pad directly over the heatpipe, but the 3rd is just chilling on its own, and got an extra thick thermal pad instead...

[@user-dn5bx2iu3e]

@@GamersNexus I wonder if the bent down cut-outs could act as pass throughs for heat pipes. I could see them just reeling the whole thing back seeing other OEM cards do absolutely nothing about the heat issues with the back plate. Always appreciate you guys. Thanks so much for the work you do.

[@chubbysumo2230]

hey, on a more positive note, dell now gives the option to not include the ewaste keyboard and mouse!

[@vylrent4130]

they will include the cheapest rgb keyboard on amazon as a replacement

[@nosirrahx]

So, is Gamers Nexus working on a "back to you Steve" shirt yet? I'll take 3.

[@Jake9066]

I'll buy one, but can I request a button-up with a collar? I have nothing that goes with my 3080ti(e).

[@sammoss3591]

@@Jake9066 underrated comment 😂

[@nosirrahx]

@@Jake9066 hehe, dad joke

[@FaceyDuck]

I once used that same Dell PC that you reviewed Steve, and it had a 2060 in it with a proper heatsink and thermal pads. It also didn’t come with any added warranties or as much bloatware. I was pretty impressed with that machine after you reviewed it, but of course I don’t use it anymore.

[@sandwichdriving101]

A Dell product that is actually decent?! The prophecy is true...

[@JVHShack]

Hell hath frozen over...

[@coolguy91975]

Their U series monitors are consistently excellent.

[@Locutus494]

@@coolguy91975 Yes, Dell has long had very good monitors, especially their UltraSharp line, and the Alienware gaming monitors are some of the best out there right now.

[@keonxd8918]

@@sandwichdriving101 dell's XPS laptops are quite decent too

[@CarthagoMike]

Imagine a Dell product getting the _"Better than Dell"_ award.

[@Amir-jn5mo]

dell should add that sticker to their products in their store lol

[@mikkelbreiler8916]

ikr

[@brunodinis7454]

"our viewer sent us this 3090" **proceeds to slap it 17 times after holding it like a gun**

[@Nostalgia_Realm]

😂😂😩

[@dasKeks28]

I think Steve even broke it. Look at the screw hole on the corner at 14:20 😂

[@Stelio_Contos]

Any video by Gamers Nexus that has "Dell" in the title, you know it's gunna be funny

[@umeng2002]

You need to make a "It's better than a Dell" trophy.

[@mikkelbreiler8916]

Underrated comment.

[@keithstoner9065]

Can we get a gaussian blur on here? *Uses mosiac instead

[@steelresilience]

10:45 That's a damn good way to advertise your deskmat. I don't plan on taking my GPU apart but damn that's helpful.

[@badwords7963]

9:41 I'm probably wrong, but it looks like the horseshoe of the heatpipe was meant to go over all of the memory modules with the right angle at the other side. Based on my completely unscientific pixel measuring of a screenshot of the backplate, the outer dimension of the horseshoe is the exact dimension that you would want the interior dimension to be to fit around the depression in the backplate. They got the dimensions wrong and didn't realize it until they started assembling. Quick fix, flip it around and add a taller thermal pad where the heat pipe was supposed to be.

[@Strife212]

Seeing a 3090 with a green PCB feels wrong

[@jonahhekmatyar]

Finally, the pcbs are returning to nature

[@matasa7463]

Just there to remind you that it's still a cheap Dell OEM part. Everything on it is still as cheap as possible, but obviously the minimum needed for a 3090 is a whole different beast from a 1660's.

[@corruptedpoison1]

@@jonahhekmatyar Nature is healing

[@shredderorokusaki3013]

i saw your name now.... Are you Greek too?!

[@gregdaweson4657]

It is like seeing an old friend. Put a smile on my face.

[@bclay68]

Looks like the backplate was made for that heat pipe to continue around where the taller thermal pad on the memory is. You can see the imprint of the heat pipe on the memory thermal pads on the other side of the die.

[@erijoelcrucel5009]

Hahahahah, that cliffhanger at 0:15 XD

[@RyanCGames]

As in the past, I think MSI makes these cards for Dell. You can tell from the "MS" model # on the front of the card right above its PCIe connector.

[@alltheboost5363]

MSI the name also shows up in the Alienware software for overclocking.

[@pjavilla]

> "Not to be confused with Michael Dell, I don't think he would send us anything at this point" lmao

[@lazyreuvin]

Probably the only 3090 I've seen that can fit in to my mini ITX case surprisingly... I already have my 3080 which I pre-ordered last November coming (in three weeks hopefully), but it would be interesting to see if other manufacturers will release smaller sized cards in the near future...

[@lazyreuvin]

@@nataliek3384 I have a louqe ghost s1. Really love the build and quality of the case but I'm definitely limited as its only a two slot case. I had to deshroud my evga xc3 ultra to fit. I would also recommend getting a meshlicious or a formd t1 if you're after other mini itx options 😊.

[@Promis_QS_Panda]

Expect the TVA to take the person responsible for Dell having a good product.

[@lucaschinder3875]

I understood that reference! Ps: literally just finished the 6th ep. Pretty cool yet confusing, Disney wth gimme my post credit scene >:(

[@thealien_ali3382]

I understood this to, I need to watch the final episode today!

[@a.sanford8731]

I really appreciate your journalistic integrity. As weird as Dell can be, I see you giving them praise where it's deserved, and that's nice to see.

[@StYfReX]

This types of cards reminds me of captains workspace GPUs

[@CaveyMoth]

If only Gamers Nexus used Cornholio Mark for their GPU benchmarks.

[@bentron5228]

It dosen't have enough fans to be one

[@shredderorokusaki3013]

@@bentron5228 Still i havent found RTX 3080 yet! Since october i go to shops trying to find rtx33080 and now i also search for rtx3070ti or rtx 3080 ti. I just came back from a shop. They told me that they expect full avaliaibiltiy until the end of the year. But they also told me that there are people who has ordered the cards since 5 months ago and havent received them yet!!! At least myG TX 970 G1 GAMING that i have since november 2014 still runs evrything at max settings 1440p 30+ fps and games that are not very demanding like crash bandicoot 4 for example, still run maxed 1440p 60 fps. I hope avaliaibility becomes normal soon so i can get a card!!! Anyway, see my videos too i play all action games and most fighters!

[@shredderorokusaki3013]

@@CaveyMoth Still i havent found RTX 3080 yet! Since october i go to shops trying to find rtx33080 and now i also search for rtx3070ti or rtx 3080 ti. I just came back from a shop. They told me that they expect full avaliaibiltiy until the end of the year. But they also told me that there are people who has ordered the cards since 5 months ago and havent received them yet!!! At least myG TX 970 G1 GAMING that i have since november 2014 still runs evrything at max settings 1440p 30+ fps and games that are not very demanding like crash bandicoot 4 for example, still run maxed 1440p 60 fps. I hope avaliaibility becomes normal soon so i can get a card!!! Anyway, see my videos too i play all action games and most fighters!

[@hyperstimmed]

I'm on my third Dell system and never had anything but a good experience with them. A desktop I got at age 13, a laptop at age 22 and another laptop at age 30. My current G15 laptop was originally supposed to be an Asus G15, but the Asus was total garbage with the worst backlight bleed I've ever seen, trash fan curve and extremely annoying boot animations. I ended up exchanging it for the Dell and haven't had any complaints aside from the trackpad. Automatic bios update works better than any other system I've bought or built (and I've built at minimum 40) In terms of customer service.. Dell repaired my cousins desktop free of charge even though his warranty expired a year previous.. HP on the other hand told my uncle he had to pay $350 for a motherboard to fix a RECALLED laptop, because he was one month past the recall period. Needless to say I have avoided HP like the plague ever since. I feel like with Dell they catch more heat than they deserve a good chunk of the time. That said, I do dislike what they did with Alienware a lot. They ruined what was once a great company. I suspect it was to make their XPS line look better. Really happy with my G15 though.. It's the 11800H/3060 variant, not Ryzen edition for anyone curious. I wanted the Ryzen one but Best Buy didn't have it at the time.

[@DeSinc]

I was JUST looking at a 3080 dell model thinking there's no way I'd buy one even if it was the only one I could get, although now due to this video... no, no I can wait for a non-green pcb model

[@arz1898]

Just a random info but it seems to be any nvidia card with GDDR6X memory will draw so much power at idle (around 100-120w for 3080ti. not sure for 3080) Idk, that seems not good specially if you leave your pc at night, it can even warm the room!

[@DeSinc]

@@arz1898 my 1080 draws 20% power at idle until I turn on gsync where it drops back down to 5-8% idle, I imagine that might be related. if I recall correctly, I used to be able to idle at lower power without having to use gsync on desktop.

[@gregdaweson4657]

Green pcb is the best pcb. RGB looks terrible. Change my mind

[@I_am_ENSanity]

I got an Alienware R10 during Dell's last sale for under $2k, it has a 5800x and 6800xt. I debated simply pulling them out but decided to add in a few fans to help the airflow and add some thermal pads to the GPU. Overall it came out pretty good and is working well.

[@CLoDaMan]

I don't know if you guys have looked at their Rtx 3080, but they look identical with the exception of the back plate copper heat pipe they added for the vram cooling. Out of the box, the front memory runs hot as hell because there is no contact with the cooling capabilities of the heat sink, a .5mm thermal pad or even some thermal paste surprisingly does a better job at dissipating heat simply by adding the paste or pad between the copper vapor chambers and the black plate covering the vram in the front. The heat on the 3080 I dealt with, dropped from over 110 to just under 90c and allowed it to stop thermal throttling. Great break down, thanks for taking the time Steve.

[@MrHandsomeStudios]

GN: "Sometimes Dell actually tries" Dell: **Loud cheering noises and opening champagne 🍾🥂**

[@mobianproductions]

Adding a 0.5mm thermal pad between the heat sink and the base plate allows better thermal contact of the memory to the heat sink. I have done this to 2 Dell 3080s and it lowers the memory temps by about 10 to 15 degrees. This does bring up the temps on the GPU core by 5-/+ degrees.

[@dtns4551]

"Better than expected" award!

[@bportermusic]

Slight correction to point out here - the rear heatpipe DOES run over the back memory mudules, which you can see on the thermal pads that are more compressed where the heatpipe connects to them. The thicker pad on one side of the memory modules is for the side that doesnt have the heatpipe. A better design would be if the heatpipe wrapped around to cover all the modules, but I don't even think any AIB has thought to use a flat heatpipe like this to better cool the ram chips on the back of the card.

[@glacor]

"Dell tries" Dell - Looks like we have more corners we can cut next time to reach the bottom of the barrel

[@starlight4649]

My RX 6700xt came from a dell Alienware. Thank God someone rescued that card and offered it for sale, and at a pretty good price No extraneous stifling backplate, decently high performance, and pretty minimal outside of the heat sink and pretty good fans. My PC has never been quieter, honestly

[@WinderTP]

“apply some gaussian blur on this" *Applies pixelation*

[@Wintelburst]

Around @9:00 It looks like the heat pipe was meant to circle all 3 sides of the memory, but something has changed those plans and the back plate was not fixed for the change.

[@JosephWall117]

I have this card, but I got it several months ago. I also bought it in the same type of R10 system and re-housed it in another case (after the alienware PSU failed due to overheating). I can tell you that Dell didn't actually make them all this way. Mine had considerably less thermal pads, and a lot less paste. I didn't have any of the extra tall pads seen here on my unit, only the thinner ones that cover the chips only partially. I opened it up so that I could add more thermal material because my VRAM was hitting 100c while mining as the only video card in an open case. After opening it up and doing to my card at home basically exactly what you've observed on this card from the factory, temperatures while mining dropped to around 90c on the VRAM, but now crammed into a smaller case with another video card also mining, so it's actually an even bigger difference than it appears. I'm suspecting they've had some RMAs or at least customer complaints from these RTX 3090 Alienware systems and in order to reduce RMAs they've started to include more thermal compound from the factory in more recent models.

[@TheVillainOfTheYear]

Damn, Dell. Why can't you just sell these alone instead of encased in e-waste?

[@Carrotsalesman]

Hey Steve, I get immense satisfaction seeing your meticulously created intro logo animation. But. My, and I'm assuming most people, don't get to appreciate it in it's full HD glory, due to KZbin videos starting at 420p for the first second or 2, before becoming HD. This video being the fantastic exception. Can I recommend a small snippet like in this video, just before logo, so your hard work can be appreciated? Thanks! P.S. Yeah I'm a little obsessed with your logo, but it's just so crisp, so satisfying when it's HD that I sometimes even slide back to the beginning to watch it again in all it's glory!

[@richardwbecker3648]

I have a Dell RTX 3090 Ti, there isn't much information about it on the internet, it has a triple fan shroud and the heatsink is quite larger than the one in the video, but it's pretty quiet and barely makes any noise at all at full load. I was a little worried about using an OEM GPU but looks like the heat dissipation is pretty solid, just a little worried about the quality control standards... Hopefully when it fails the RTX 4090 will be cheaper by then...

[@TheThugzman]

My favorite part 14:12 ' They must be doing something wrong ' Ohh I'm waiting as well lol!..

[@sebaschan-uwu]

I like the look of dell's black rectangle gpus. Looks minimalistic and clean

[@RealRaynedance]

So in a span of 20 years, we've gone from "Dude, you're getting a Dell." to "Dude, you're getting a Dell?"

[@angolin9352]

I don't remember a time when Dell produced good PCs - They were known to be prone to breaking in the mid-2000s.

[@Thelango99]

@@angolin9352 They made good laptops in the 90's.

[@hyperstimmed]

@@angolin9352 every pre-built company has had a bad rep in someone's mind because a lot of people who buy prebuilds don't know wtf they're doing, and break their computer. I knew someone who kept ranting about Acer being shit because they had multiple Acer computers with issues.. Turned out she installed a huge load of malware on all of them. The hardware was fine.

[@angolin9352]

@@hyperstimmed That's true - But Dells were specifically prone to hardware failures in the early and mid 2000s. I'm not sure if it was a mobo or PSU issue (it was before I knew hardware troubleshooting), but nearly everyone I knew had Dells that would just not turn on one day. Looking back on it, it was probably part of the capacitor plague, but the people I knew who had other brands like HP or Lenovo hardly ever had those issues happen to those systems.

[@hyperstimmed]

@@angolin9352 the Dell desktop I got in 2004 had a hardware failure, funny enough. It wasn't Dell's fault though and didn't have to do with the motherboard or power, the GeForce FX5200 GPU I had in it died when one of the capacitors randomly blew. I now have to wonder if that was a common issue

[@g0nk]

I got a Alienware 3080 out of an prebuilt and then put it in my own system, like "Michael", and it's been rock solid and great!

[@Commander_ZiN]

I reckon the reason the sizing was wrong on the back plate is the heat pipe was meant to continue to there but another cost cutting measure. Look at the other side for comparison.

[@AlixFlemmer]

Can't give enough kudos for highlighting the graph's vertical axis being magnified and why. Awesome statistical integrity.

[@aaronmeneses9201]

That music change at 10:58 totally caught me off guard! I even double checked to see if I started a horror game in the background by accident! Lol

[@AcuardThe3rd]

i kind of wish we saw some game testing on this card. (FPS, comparisons to other 3090, and older, etc)

[@TeacherGamer1981]

I have some in my chanel

[@cordellsteiner353]

"There's not a tamper seal. That's interesting" Well generally I think Dell wouldn't be worried about it's customers WANTING to tamper with a GPU.

[@cpanic1153]

Why havent you reviewed the HP Omen pre-builds? They are ACTUALLY AVAILABLE on amazon with RTX cards at normal prices

[@michaelhughes9278]

i keep seeing all of these award name recommendations and i can't help but give you mine as well! it gets the, " I can't believe it's dell" award!

[@porklaser]

This pint sized 3090 makes sense from a PC builder perspective. It was pointed out that the stock 3090 was too large to be integrated in to the supply chain for major PC makers. When you're building these things in volume having to plan around a special sized part is an expensive problem.

[@LittleBear85]

That empty channel that has the larger thermal pad is probably where the copper heatpipe was supposed to terminate.

[@daydroid7951]

What I got out of this, if dell sold this as a stanalone product and you asked Steve "Is this worth buying?" he'd tell you to go for it.

[@shawn2780]

This would be neat in some kind of open window sleeper build, no one would ever suspect that tiny little card is a 3090

[@dirtcreature3d]

Just picked one of these up for 700 bucks, super stoked!

[@maurice482390]

Bought to pick one up for $450

[@cactuslietuva]

@@maurice482390 where you bought it for 450 usd?

[@theboy2777]

hey i see you posted this 3 months ago, how is the card still holding up?

[@dirtcreature3d]

@@theboy2777 still running great! I use it for 3D rendering so the card is on constantly, crunching away on frames, super stoked with it

[@theboy2777]

@@dirtcreature3d ok great thanks ! I saw a RTX 3080 Dell model just like this on facebook marketplace for 500 dollars and i was thinking if it would be a good buy.

[@AlpineTheHusky]

You dropping that backplate on the PCB hurt my soul

[@moezmedia98]

Dell is a company with great engineers but horrible higher ups

[@MartinKrafft]

you overlooked that the heat pipe runs over the modules, but Dell overlooked that there is no heat pipe on the other side, so the sheet metal is too narrow and a thick thermal pad was used as the production of a new tool would be too expensive.

[@tomstev5026]

Steve: It's better than expected. Dell: Champagne corks pop

[@antoniodimitrov8315]

I think you misspoke and meant that DELL never leaves corners uncut. They always deliver a well rounded product.

[@kenlu7261]

OMG... this is my card!!! I'm using an Alienware Aurora R12. This is like the first ever Dell 3090 Review and its by GN!!

[@D.Xanders]

Thank you for bringing up Sapphire cooling designs, We've been running Sapphire cards since 2008 and have always been very happy with the cooling.

[@iglooom]

At 9:43 looks like they planed to extend heatpipe for this side and put in place instead of thick thermalpad, but something went wrong.

[@ericshun2552]

That Green PCB should be the next thing they should do better, it screams mid-2000s Optiplex and has to change

[@weavercs4014]

Yeah and blue ones also. Just make them black

[@Vegemeister1]

Do better by using green PCB everywhere.

[@CharlesVanNoland]

Dell banks on the fact that they can call the components in their prebuilts what they technically are. An RTX 3090!? Hells yeah! Gimme that gaming PC! Meanwhile, they could've totally dropped the ball on making a GPU that compares to legitimate versions of the GPU trying to cut corners at every chance - memory overheating, GPU overheating, everything just performing horribly as a result of them not giving a crap. Apparently whoever was tasked with the Dell RTX 3090 actually had some passion.

[@DeathBringer769]

I didn't even know Dell made Nvidia cards themselves. I figured they'd just buy from another cheap OEM and put it in their systems.

[@Blayern]

The backplate heat pipe is making contact with 2/3 of the memory modules. It’s not running next to them.

[@_qwe_fk_1700]

8:25 the heatpipe does go over the memory. You can clearly see the part where the thermal pad is nice and flat next to the part isn't. The part that isn't is in the same location where the thermal pad material sticks to the backplate. Therefore the heat pipe is indirect contact with the thermal pad

[@nihanjahin]

Please do some power supply tear down videos, we really need to know which companies are using best materials

[@TuplaTTT]

Extremely similar cooler compared to the HP Omen RTX 3080/3090 cards. Omen cards also have the vapor chamber on the coldplate. The Omen 3080 uses the same cooler as the 3090 version including the backplate, but unfortunately they didn't add thermal pads to the backplate of the 3080. By adding thermal paste on top of the 3080 vaporchamber (so it makes contact with the middle-plate that cools the memory) and adding thermal pads to the backplate you could drop the memory temperatures by a whooping 20 degrees celsius. At that point the only possible upgrade for better cooling would have been an EK waterblock, which I did (EK has listen Omen cards in their compatibility charts).

[@proscriptus]

That left hand memory module on the back-it looks like the heat pipe was originally going to keep going down that side, because there's the same smooth finish there as under it on the other side.

[@tanishqbhaiji103]

I think Nvidia had this high a base spec for the “whole 3090” and Dell had to make it this good for the design to be approved by Nvidia because I don’t believe they won’t skimp every penny everytime they get the chance

[@ericryang1757]

Nah dell engineers are just braindead. One of the alienware engineers literally said their systems are designed to run at 100C on cpus to get max performance

[@tanishqbhaiji103]

@@ericryang1757 not the engineers’ fault.

[@ardithconley2628]

I worked at Dell when they made good stuff in a lot of areas. New build. They assemble the parts they are given the way they are trained. Most of the time due to quality checks. If the supply chain has bad parts they do not stop. They work through the bad parts until the good ones arrive. Tech support sometimes they know the problem with things like bad caps and the such and sometimes they do not know the issues. Here is the big problem. metric in all areas such as refurb. I have seen lots of bad stuff get pushed out do to Metrics on things like laptops that need thermo pads changed but you have to take the mobo out. Which take more time. Which means they do not get fixed. Just turned until they pass burn. Bad things is they come back and end up using the same bad parts form teardown.

[@manarallego3745]

I like how Steve uses the official "Spock Rating Scale": 98.9% of things - "Hmmmm..." 1% - "Interesting... " 0.1% - "Fascinating...!"

[@Liinuli.]

These Dell cards are actually quite sought after for their size (along with the few Blower 3090s Nvidia forced AIB's to discontinue). Usually at least 150-200 more than a FE or a regular AIB model. The blower ones go for insane money. Often 4090 money.

[@justair44]

My guess is Dell went to it's board partners and said, make sure these are not coming back to us with a ton of issues. They were likely surprised at the failures of the 2000 series which didn't handle heat like the champ 10 series did. You see this with their ECS made 5600/5700/XT all the way up thru the MSI 3060/70/80/90s. All of them are engineered fantastically well to handle heat. My memory rarely goes above 78c on the 5700XT I own (looks like it's straight out of 2012 mind you..), and considering how cool the Dell 3070 stays im guessing the memory runs cooler than many cards out there as well across all their 3000 series cards.

[@lazerlake]

It's getting better y'all. I walked into a Microcenter about two hours after they opened and walked out with a 3090 at MSRP. Granted it was the last card they had but that fact that that happened at all means it's getting better.

[@LavitosExodius]

I have a Dell 3080 and that thing is crispy even with a box fan blowing on it.

[@Joker-no1fz]

steve confirmed atheist or agnostic.

[@topherd1011]

Eh if you’re looking for a 3090.. in this environment.. hell I’d take it 🤷‍♂️ The only thing Dell I currently own is an Alienware 1080p 240hz monitor. I’m very happy with it.

[@gamebrigada2]

I don't think you realized that one of the memory modules contacts the heat pipe, and the other "mistake" is where they likely planned to also contact the heat pipe but someone changed their mind and they didn't want to retool.

[@m4c1990]

Heatpipe on the Backplate? Actually a sexy feature.

[@FordPickUPRed]

Remember the XPS 720 Case from Dell? They don't build them like that anymore.

[@DukeGaGa]

I think the backplate memory cutout was meant to have the heat pipe on both side and top, but for some reason the heat pipe was only long enough for the rear and top side, so they padded the empty space with thermal pad.

[@damonraven2296]

with the higher termopad on the backplate side- probably heatpipe where supposed to run there in place of bigger thermopad.

[@hikariminami9965]

11:08 My friend when applying thermal paste.. "there is no too much" he quote.. (Imo, its not really bad, but i usually using "small or medium dot" method or "covering" method rather than "large/bulky goup" like that. and we usually using non conductive thermal paste made by Deepcool or grizzly, so less worry)

[@TheSilviu8x]

The reveal of the heat pipe on the backplate was like a bucket of icy water, thrown at all the other GPU manufacturers!

[@saeedalizaheer9421]

Thanks for the review, Steve. Back to you Steve

[@jeffreykehoe4940]

Great review, but the only thing I see wrong with your review is that the 3090 isn't offer in the case(r10) shown in the video. It's only offered in the R13 case which has better air exchange due to better engineering of the case itself. I am going to switch out my R13 case fans when it arrives, but not due to better fans, but quieter fans with the same volume of air movement. I have, in my life, bought many Dell computers, but I usually build gaming computers for myself, like my last beast(Dual Liquid cooled 980TIs). But this time it was Dell all the way, couldn't even come close to building this for the money I spent for this pre-built. I'll be waiting a month, but I think the 2k I saved will end up being worth it.

[@michaelthompson9798]

Great review GN 🥰👍🥳🤯 and we’ll done to Dell! I got my bro a Dell G5 model pc here in Australia 🇦🇺 for an extremely good deal at initial launch of the RTX3070 and this pc has the RTX3070 and it performs very well. The GPU is quiet under a full load and never goes pass mid to high 60’s Celsius and it’s a 2-slot design similar looking to this 3090’s and features thermal pads on the memory as well! The rest of the pc is not bad like the one reviewed on GN a little while ago. Dell can make vg pc gear, just not their more mainstream models.

[@jerryhu9005]

Not sure if you noticed, but at 14:23 there is some damage to the PCB where the screw goes through at the corner

[@knappen5326]

A video on HPs variant of the card would be fun

[@danielzhang5842]

Brought me back to when you used an entire large tube of expensive thermal paste in that one intro. Shit was hilarious.

[@Tup3x]

Those backplate heat pipes do touch the memory chips, partly. The other section that doesn't have heat pipes use larger thermal pad because it lacks the heat pipe. If it didn't have large pad, about 33% of the memory chips would not have any contact to back plate.

[@CUBEoneVX]

If you look closely, the heat pipe on the backplate actually runs across 2 lines of memory, but only half of the memory with.