Twelve-Layer PCB Driving Up Costs of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series?

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



Igor’s Lab has shared more information regarding NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series and the manufacturing process behind them. Apparently, the higher-tiered models (e.g., RTX 3090, RTX 3080) leverage extremely complex, 12-layer circuit boards. And that complexity, of course, is driving up the costs for the powerful and power-hungry GPUs, particularly for board partners.



“…from the GeForce RTX ‘3080’ up, it definitely has to be 12 layers (5 cores), according to NVIDIA’s rules, which also apply to the board partners and their own boards,” Wallossek wrote. “The 12-layer boards … are essential for the use of GDDR6X and the new Base Design Kit. And so several times there were rumours of horrified sales managers and controllers...

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[Zarathustra]

Freaking Baklava video card

 

[Burticus]

I cannot afford all these layers. I need a low calorie version.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Well I trust Igor. He's been pretty spot on with his theories, and rumors, and usually uses solid science to back them up. Even if he's wrong, I doubt it'll be by much.

 

[Brian_B]

Is there anything that doesn't drive up the cost on nVidia's side?

12 layer PCB, new cooler, 6X RAM, new PSU standard, totally organic, free range, hand made by Union labor in the USA, etc... Does nVidia even try to do anything to keep the cost down?

 

[Dan_D]

Is there anything that doesn't drive up the cost on nVidia's side?

12 layer PCB, new cooler, 6X RAM, new PSU standard, totally organic, free range, hand made by Union labor in the USA, etc... Does nVidia even try to do anything to keep the cost down?

Yeah, companies like Foxconn and Flextronics usually build them in Taiwan. It is true that extra layers will increase the cost of the product. We see it all the time on the motherboards.

 

[Uvilla]

Well its all about trial balloons and expectation games.
Good job on Nvidia, they could price things at anything and it won't matter.
AMD has been so tight lipped its incredible and annoying... A lot annoying. They do benefit greatly from Nvidias high prices, so they are doing exactly what should be done. Stay effin quiet and release a good ( hopefully funcional) product and price accordingly... And of course, the higher Nvidia goes the higher AMD can go, its all about price/performance. Halo cards help for sure. The 3090 is very obviously the halo, very few are meant to buy, that is why I am sure it will be 1599, if not more.
It looking at the beast that 3090 seems to be, AMD won't have a halo to match. It may still be technically possible for them to match or near match but they don't seems interested to go to the lenghts Nvidia does.