The GeForce GTX 1080 from NVidia is among the top video cards in the market for PC gamers. Its graphical processing power allows the latest and heaviest of PC games to function very smoothly, delivering great overall experience to gamers. Yet, one downside of the video card is that it is physically big, and requires a large desktop casing to fit. Gigabyte is changing that as it released the smallest version of the popular high-end graphics card.
Gigabyte's GTX 1080 Mini-ITX is packed in a small frame, about 6.7 inches in length, which is around 3.8 inches shorter than the standard variants. Still, the mini video card delivers many of the same features found in the large GTX 1080.
The video card has 8 GB of GDDR5X video memory at 10 GHz, while its outputs are very comparable with larger graphical processing units. It has an HDMI 2.0b port, a dual-link DVI-D port, and three DisplayPort 1.4 ports.
The GTX Mini also boasts the same clock speeds as the bigger video card, running at 1607 MHz base speed, with a 1733 MHz boosted speed. When placed in overclock mode, the base speed is 1632 MHz and boosted to 1771 MHz.
The mini version also consumes power in the same way as its larger counterpart. It uses the same 8-pin power connecter and needs to be connected to at least a 500-watt power supply unit.
The challenge with the smaller card is putting a cooling solution that will keep its temperatures down. With regular-sized video cards, companies have ample space to put in more fans and heat pipes to help cool down the unit.
To get around this, Gigabyte is using a custom cooling system that uses a 90 mm fan with a blade specifically designed to increase airflow in the video card, along with three composite copper heat pipes to pull heat away from the graphics card.
