The reference heatsink for NVIDIA’s RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti has surfaced (once again), this time without the shroud or PCB. The heatsink appears to have four heat pipes with a large block for the GPU core. Furthermore, the second fan heatsink is physically attached to the design and seems to be unremovable.
It’ll be interesting to see if this opposite fan-design cooler will be more efficient than the previous dual-fan design or not. The main purpose of fans on opposite sides is to improve cooling when there’s no cabinet outlet on the side opposite to the PCB. That setup has become quite prominent in recent years even though it has an adverse effect on thermals.
